Some Required Effort
by izanyas
Summary: Shizuo starts working as an elementary school teacher with panic rattling his every bone. He expects kid shenanigans and the daily terror of trying not to mess up. He doesn't expect the Orihara twins, or the older brother they bring with them. AU, Shizaya. Trans Izaya.
1. Chapter 1

Cross-posted from AO3—an AU fic written for a friend, who wanted Shizuo surrounded by tiny kids. Who doesn't want that, really.

This is not beta-ed, and despite my best efforts to spot all grammar mistakes and typos, I've probably failed in some places. Sorry about that.

This story contains themes of grief and mourning, dysfunctional families trying their best, minor character deaths (which affect main characters in not-so-minor ways), and implied transphobia. Please read at your own risk!

* * *

 **Some Required Effort  
Part I.**

Izaya watched them lower his parents' coffins in the ground without blinking.

His sisters were standing a few feet away from him, looking as quiet as any newly-orphaned child ought to—but they weren't crying, either. He thought, very faintly, that it must be a family thing.

He nodded and shook hands and accepted whispers of condolences under the scorching sun. His skin was slick with sweat, and if he hadn't worn black no doubt the whole audience would have seen the wet streaking his clothes, the shirt clinging damply to his back. All throughout the funeral, his heart beat deeply, slowly, and his blood ran thick and warm. Everything was too warm.

"Such a shame," said one man, one of Kyouko's coworkers. Former coworkers. "They were so young, too, and they had only just gotten the twins"—Izaya heard the direction of his thoughts, _the children they could care for and be proud of, at last_ —"really, such a shame. What are you going to do now?"

He was the first to ask the question directly. Izaya knew they were curious, knew most of them hadn't known about the estranged son of the Oriharas. He found it amusing, if a little annoying. Even now, people lingered around in the swollen summer heat rather than go back to the funeral home and the promise of blissful air conditioning. The call of scandal and gossip was too strong.

Izaya smiled, said something placating, and watched the man leave with disappointment hanging from the corner of his sweaty chin. He noted the name engraved into the lock of the suitcase he was carrying, the early loss of hair around his temples and the beginning of a slouch in his neck, and knew he could find him again.

"I'm thirsty," Mairu whined next to him. Kururi shifted on her small feet and looked at him pleadingly.

"You should have taken some water with you," he answered.

They both frowned, the expression making the resemblance between them even more striking, before their faces smoothed again and they started talking to each other too lowly for him to hear.

He watched them for another moment before turning his head away.

He would have to drop out of college, he supposed, noting distantly that men were shoveling dirt into his parents' grave already. He didn't want to let his sisters fall into the system. Too many stories of foster families mistreating their charges, or adopting for money and privileges.

Izaya didn't really like or appreciate the girls. He was seventeen when they were born, already long gone from the family house and hardly keeping in touch. He had known Kyouko was pregnant—she had seen fit to send him a text when she had learned the news, and again after the birth—but he hadn't cared. He was neck-deep into college applications, high school finals and entrance exams. It hadn't seemed real to him at the time. Even when he had visited Kyouko at the hospital and seen the smile on her exhausted face as the babes squirmed and gurgled in her arms, he had thought it amusing and a little irritating, but nothing more. He had seen his sisters exactly three times after that—once on their first birthday, once during a family reunion he had decided to go to because Kyouko had invited someone he wanted to meet, and once by accident while doing the groceries in Shinjuku.

They were his charges now, though. If he concentrated hard enough Izaya knew he would find the sting of panic under the blankness of his feelings, so instead he planned. He was about to start the last year of his studies in journalism, but he would have to drop out. He would find a job. Something substantial. He couldn't exactly hope for easy and well-payed work, not with nothing more than a high school diploma under his belt. Heartbeat speeding up, he thought again of the proposal he had refused six months ago. _Call me_ , Shiki Haruya had said in his gruff voice. And Izaya had replied, _I'll think about it_ , thinking Shiki would take the answer for what it was, but Shiki had only laughed and texted him five minutes later. Izaya still had the text in his phone.

"Let's go," he told the twins.

They followed him reluctantly, their shoes dragging through the gravel. A few people were still outside, watching them pass, and Izaya knew that they saw the way the twins clung to each other behind him, the uncrossed space between them, knew they were remembering the service and how he had never touched them, not once—no comforting hand on their small shoulders, no smile or tears or loving whispers.

"Where are we going?" Kururi asked. She hadn't said anything until then, and her voice was raspy, wind-soft.

"My place."

"Where is it?"

Izaya didn't answer. For a breathless second he saw his future as he had always envisioned it dissolve and change like aspirin in a glass of water. He saw the months and years to come, the mess he would make of things because that was all he knew how to do. Messes. Strips of spite and resentment littering his past relationships, left behind as he kept moving forward. And now he had two five-year-old girls to take care of. To feed and clothe and raise and keep relatively well-balanced.

He smiled tightly, clenching down on the fear knotting his stomach.

* * *

 _You're going to be fine_ , Celty signed. Her mouth was strained, she was trying so hard not to smile. Shizuo grunted and leaned further against the wall surrounding the schoolyard, fingers twitching in his jean pockets. _Really_ , she added. _You know what you have to do. Just go through the first day_.

"Yeah, and all the goddamn days after that," Shizuo said.

Celty's shoulders shook in silent laughter.

Shizuo sighed. "I need a cigarette," he grunted.

As expected, Celty immediately straightened up and started signing, frowning in disapproval. _You said not around the children_.

"Well, they aren't here yet, are they?"

But he hadn't taken his pack with him, all too aware that he wouldn't be able to resist the temptation otherwise. Now, he really hated himself for it.

Celty touched his shoulder briefly. _You gonna be okay?_ she asked.

"Yeah." He smiled at her. "Really, I'm just a little nervous, but—it's just going to be a bunch of kids. Not exactly the most frightening thing in the world."

 _Kids are terrifying, but you'll be great with them. I'm more worried about the coworkers. Do tell me when you get your first invitation on a date._

"Stop fucking with me," he snapped back, but his words lacked the heat of true anger. Besides, Celty knew him better than to think he could ever truly get mad at her.

He wasn't afraid, not exactly. Kids couldn't hurt him no matter how much they tried. He was more afraid of hurting _them_ , somehow—though he knew he could never raise a hand on any of them, his temper often took control of his words. He had thought, up till this point, that he would have little trouble containing it, but… Well. Anticipation and anxiousness for his first day had him doubting himself once more.

A few minutes later, the headmistress stepped out of her old-fashioned but spotless car, and walked toward him.

"Pleasure to see you again, Heiwajima," she said shortly, giving him a curt nod. "All set for your first day of class?"

"I guess," he replied a little uncertainly, but she only laughed and waved him off.

"You'll be fine. The first days are always something of a trial, but I have no doubt you'll get used to it soon. We all do. Now, shall we?"

Shizuo felt his cheeks warm at her faintly patronizing tone. Giving Celty a pat on the head and mumbling, "Tell Shinra I said hi," he turned his back on her and followed the woman up the steps and into the school itself, where he would spend most of his days this year.

He had already visited the building when he had taken the job, but headmistress Yagiri still showed him around. His classroom was at the very end of the second floor corridor. He took in the blank walls and well-used but clean desks, the blackboard looking neat and dustless as it never would for the rest of the year, the shiny linoleum. He tried to imagine twenty-odd little black-haired kids looking straight at him from the rows of chairs and tables. Suddenly feeling nauseous, he walked out, barely restraining himself from slamming the door shut.

His dropped his bag on a table in the staffroom and busied by himself making coffee. He had brought his own blend, an expensive thing Kasuka had gifted him for his first day, and figured he might as well make a good impression on his coworkers by providing something that _wasn't_ just a tasteless shot of caffeine.

The room filled in during the next half-hour. Most of the other teachers seemed to be women, with a few men here and there. A lot of them had a strained look on their faces, but seemed well-rested and ready to take on the day. Shizuo wished he felt half as confident.

"Coffee," a young woman mumbled, making a beeline for the plastic cups. "God," she moaned after the first sip. "Who _made_ this? Whoever you are, I'm giving you half my salary if you keep bringing that stuff here."

"I might have to take half your salary anyway to buy this," Shizuo answered awkwardly.

She smiled at him, something sharp and eager. "You must be Heiwajima. I'm Mikage" she said, and shook his hand firmly.

Shizuo noted the lack of honorific. The tense knots along his back relaxed a little, and his breath came out a little better. A little easier.

They chatted amiably for the next few minutes. Mikage—as she insisted he call her—was a woman of few words, which suited him just fine. She was the P.E. teacher, and stormed off to prepare the gym a good five minutes before anyone else started leaving for their own classrooms.

"Well, good luck, Heiwajima," headmistress Yagiri said, and suddenly he was alone in the staffroom.

Knowing he couldn't put it off any longer, he swung his bag over his shoulder and made his way to his classroom. After that, it was just a matter of minutes until the first children started trickling in.

Shizuo watched them with growing horror. They were so _small_. Six year-old babies somehow walking on two legs without wobbling ( _how?_ ) and chatting excitedly among themselves. Ruffled and dirt-stained clothes, brand new backpacks, colorful knee socks. One of the kids walked in smirking haughtily at him, his hair bright fucking blue. Another was talking loudly to a quiet-looking boy who kept glancing nervously around. There was a girl with glasses half the size of her face, a boy who had forgone normal jacket options for one with a purple kitten on the back, and twins.

Twins.

Shizuo felt entitled to say the world was out to get him.

Finally, the last kid came in, panting, and only six minutes after the bell had rung. Shizuo closed the door, stood before the suddenly silent crowd of twenty-two children, and tried to look non-threatening.

"Good morning," he said after a pause.

Some of them mumbled in answer. Most of them stared at him silently. It was terrifying.

"So… er… My name is Heiwajima Shizuo. I'll be your teacher this year. Why don't you all start by introducing yourselves to the rest of the class?"

More silent glaring. Shizuo almost flinched, and then remembered that he was an adult, that he was ready for this—had spent years studying and taking exams and observing how it was done—and that he had no reason to be scared of a bunch of children. None whatsoever.

"You," he growled, pointing to the boy with the kitten jacket. "You start."

He watched, satisfied, as the boy jumped to his feet and started babbling about his likes and dislikes.

The next half hour was spent observing each child and trying his best to remember all their names. He pinpointed a few future troublemakers: the boy with blue hair, Aoba, who had apparently dyed it for a bet and knew he was going to get punished for it but also said he wasn't afraid of no detention, _sensei_ —and also, apparently, this Masaomi kid who talked more than he breathed and seemed intent on becoming the official class clown.

Shizuo almost groaned out loud when one of the twins, Mairu, started babbling about Hanejima Yuuhei—Shizuo would have to tell Kasuka never to visit him at work. Her sister's introduction was a lot shorter. She only said her name, Kururi, and sat back down.

There were a few other odd kids—a boy called Ryuugamine Mikado, of all things, thought fortunately his name seemed to be the only weird thing about him. But by the time all his students had finished saying their names, Shizuo was reasonably sure that, yes, he could do this.

This was what he wanted to do. What he had worked for all these years, while his friends supported and encouraged him. He thought once again of Celty's quiet faith in his abilities, and felt himself growing a little taller.

He could do this. He would do this.

At the end of the day, Shizuo couldn't have told if time went quickly or slowly. At times it had seemed to go at a snail's pace, but then when he had looked at the green classroom clock it had been time for lunch, and then the final bell had rung. Surprisingly, he had met little trouble. He ordered Aoba to go wash his hair of the temporary dye before his parents noticed—and proceeded to blame Shizuo for it—and the boy had complied with a heatless glare. Other than this, everything had gone smoothly.

He was relatively sure he knew all the kids' names now. He said them one by one in his head as he watched them leave come four o'clock. They trickled out as their parents picked them up. Most of them took the time to greet Shizuo and introduce themselves; it was easily the most tedious part of this day. Finally, after Mikado's somewhat boring mom walked out of the room with a hand on her son's shoulder, he was alone.

Or not.

"What are you doing?" he blurted out. The twins—Mairu and Kururi—had finished putting on their shoes and jackets, and had already made their way to the door.

"Going home," Mairu replied, looking bored.

"Where're your parents?"

Kururi made a small, aborted gesture. Shizuo saw Mairu's hand close tightly on her sister's, and something queasy-feeling made its way to his stomach.

"Our brother can't pick us up today." Mairu's voice sounded a bit faint. "He said to apologize to you and tell you that we don't live far and we can go home alone."

"That's not how it works," Shizuo explained, trying to keep his voice calm. He had no idea who their brother was, but he didn't like the sound of this explanation one bit. "I can't just let you go home on your own."

"Then we're stuck here until Iza-nii decides to show up and we don't know when he finishes working and maybe he'll stay out late because he won't know that we couldn't get home and you'll have to stay with us until tomorrow morning when he finally notices," Mairu said in one breath, crossing her arms.

"He'd notice," Kururi murmured suddenly. Mairu snorted.

Shizuo blinked helplessly.

He wanted to ask where their parents were again. It made no sense that they would have asked the girls' older brother to pick them up if he was working late—surely a neighbor could come in their stead, or an uncle or grandmother. But Mairu was looking at him as though she expected him to physically jump on her, and Kururi still hadn't released her sister's hand.

So he said, "Okay. You said you live close, right? I'll walk you."

Mairu's eyes widened. "Really?"

"Yeah. Class is over, and I don't have anything planned. It doesn't bother me." That wasn't exactly true, but they didn't need to know it. And a thirty-minute walk wouldn't put that big a dent in his personal time.

The sun was shining when they got out, but the wind was too strong for Shizuo or the girls to feel warm. They walked in tense silence until the trees bordering the sidewalk disappeared and Shizuo felt the air turn crisper. Mairu had led them to a block of old apartment buildings.

It wasn't _exactly_ a bad place. The paint had flaked off in places and turned yellow in others, and some of the outside pipes were red with rust. But the façade was clean and the street was bare but quiet. The trash bins were shut and put side by side in tidy rows, not overflowing with unsightly content as he would have expected.

"Well, we're here," Mairu said, probably coming to the conclusion that Shizuo wasn't moving any time soon of his own volition.

In truth, he didn't really want to leave. He wanted to see the girls' parents and ask them about their absence—or maybe their brother, if he was home already. But he couldn't just go and knock on their door and he felt drained, suddenly, wrought and tired as if he had run a marathon.

He needed to see Celty.

"All right," he replied at last. "I'll see you tomorrow at school. Don't be late."

Mairu mumbled something in answer, but he didn't catch it. He watched them go up the outside stairs to the third floor, and struggle with the lock of their door for a moment before walking inside and disappearing from view.

Shrugging the uneasiness off his thoughts, Shizuo made his way back to the school. He had work to get back to, and Celty would be here to pick him up in less than an hour.

He was still deep in paperwork and lesson planning when he heard the tell-tale sound of his friend's bike from below his window. He made a quick job of putting his stuff into his worn bag and locking the classroom. Celty was waiting for him outside the school gate, leaning against the seat of her bike, a smile on her lips.

 _How did it go?_ she signed eagerly once he was close enough to briefly press a hand on her shoulder.

He smiled tightly. "Fine, I guess. I didn't screw any of them up yet at least. Please get me out of here, though."

She laughed, radiating the warmth and friendliness he had grown used to in the past few years—with her shoulders going up and down and a few happy wrinkles lined around her blue eyes. Shizuo immediately felt a little lighter, a little less tired. She gestured for him to take a seat behind her and he complied, finding comfort in the press of her back to his chest as Shooter, as she had named her prized vehicle, started its familiar roar.

They drove in silence. Even though Celty couldn't answer him with her hands busy stirring the bike into motion, Shizuo would sometimes babble thoughtfully when they were riding together. Today he didn't feel like it, though. His thoughts went back to the Orihara twins; to their serious faces, to their closeness which felt to him like isolation, to the deserted street and rundown apartment building they lived in.

Celty made him coffee once they reached the place she shared with Shinra. They were alone, as Shinra would be working late at the hospital that day. Shizuo almost cried in relief when Celty took out a small pack of cigarettes from a kitchen drawer.

 _Thought you might need it_ , she said with a smile. He stuck one between his lips and lit it immediately, throwing her an apologetic glance for the smell. She waved it off.

With nicotine in his brain and bitter coffee burning his tongue, Shizuo finally felt himself relax. He could never stay tense and worried for long. Not at Celty's place, which was as much a home to him as his own or his parents' old house. Not with the weight of comforting memories slowly pressing down on him.

He chatted for a long time. Celty listened in rapt attention, as she always did. She smiled and nodded and laughed in the right places, teasing him for his anxiousness in front of the children without ever scolding him for it. She knew better than anyone how he felt about his job—how much he had wanted it and how hard he had worked to get where he was, both in school and on himself. So he told her just about everything. Aoba's prank and Masaomi's cheerful art of making a mess, Anri the bespectacled girl and her quiet demeanor.

"There's a kid named Ryuugamine Mikado—don't laugh, I'm not joking," he added, seeing her hide her mouth behind her hand. "No idea how his folks came up with that one. His mom came to pick him up after class, she seemed normal enough."

 _Maybe they thought a proud-sounding name like that would give him confidence_ , she replied, but the twist of her mouth betrayed her amusement.

"Well, they're gonna be disappointed. Mikado is a quiet kid. Shy, too. He would probably have stayed in his corner all day but Masaomi apparently decided he was his best friend. At least he's not alone."

There was a silence. Uneasiness crept back on Shizuo as his mind once again showed him the blank gray street, the flaking paint and rotten pipes.

"Actually," he said slowly, "I wanted to talk to you about something."

He wasn't certain he should talk about the twins, but keeping what he had seen to himself felt somehow wrong.

 _What is it?_ Celty asked. Her brows were furrowed in worry at his tone.

"It's not, like, serious or anything, just… The twins—Mairu and Kururi—their parents didn't show up after class."

 _How come?_

"I don't know," he answered helplessly. "They said their brother was supposed to come, but couldn't, so I had to walk them home."

Celty stayed silent for a moment, looking thoughtful. _It doesn't seem like that big a deal_ , she said at last. _Maybe something unexpected came up and he didn't have time to ask anyone else._

"Apparently he knew in advance. He told them to apologize to me. I don't see how he couldn't've asked someone else to come for them."

She nodded. Shizuo stared unseeingly at his lukewarm coffee. He drank it in one go out of habit more than real need, and made a face as he swallowed the dregs. Putting down his cup, he took out a second cigarette and lit it, breathing in the smoke till his lungs screamed with the need to exhale.

"I don't know if it's anything worth worrying about," he murmured, feeling a little awkward. "I mean—I don't know them. Maybe you're right, and it's just a one-time thing, and I'm being a mother hen about all of it."

 _You should trust your instinct_ , Celty replied after a slight hesitation.

"Yeah. I guess you're right." But he still felt foolish, getting all worked-up after only one day of teaching. Having thoughts like neglect come to his mind when the girls had looked properly fed and clothed and cared for, if a little quirky and sidelined.

They spend another hour in companionable small talk. Celty always had a new thing or two to say about her job as a courrier, the people she met and who asked for her services. Shizuo didn't care all that much about whose wife was pretending to be her husband's lover to get proof of his cheating, or who was secretly meeting whom, but he liked seeing Celty sign excitedly and knew how much this mattered to her. There weren't a lot of opportunities for non-verbal people, and he always felt warm and soothed when he saw how happy her somewhat unconventional job made her.

Shinra joined them around nine in the evening, looking tired and still wearing his lab coat, but smiling gleefully when Celty immediately greeted him with a hug.

"Glad to see you too, Celty," he said once she released him. "You too, Shizuo."

"Hi, Shinra."

And so the day continued. They ate together the burned pasta Shizuo prepared and stuffed themselves full of cake afterward, before dozing in front of a re-run of Kasuka's first movie Celty had caught on TV.

It was warm and familiar, calming in a way nothing else was in Shizuo's life. Celty's shoulder pressed against his arm and he could hear Shinra's breathing slowly taking the rhythm of real sleep, and he didn't at any point feel like an intruder.

This was what home felt like. Quiet and usual.

* * *

Izaya came home a little after midnight.

His neck hurt and he wanted nothing more than to escape the crushing tightness of his clothes and crash into bed for the night, but when he walked inside the apartment he found Mairu waiting for him.

"What are you doing up at this hour?" he asked tiredly, kicking off his shoes and throwing his coat onto a chair. "Don't you have school tomorrow? And where's your sister?"

"Kuru-nee's sleeping," she replied with an annoyed tilt of her chin. With her wearing soft blue pajamas and bunny print socks, the effect what somewhat ruined. "And I needed to talk to you about school."

"Well, go ahead, and make it quick."

She snorted haughtily. He ignored her and poured himself a glass of water, dropping unceremoniously into a plastic chair in the tiny kitchenette.

"Shizu-chan said we can't walk back on our own after class is over, it's 'gainst the rules or something. He had to come with us."

Izaya choked. "Shizu- who the hell is Shizu-chan?"

"Our teacher," Mairu replied, as if it to say, _obviously_. Izaya put down his glass slowly.

"Do you have permission to call him that?"

"Of course not. We call him sensei to his face. But he's nice."

I don't want to know, Izaya thought, feeling more exhausted by the second. "Okay. So your teacher walked you both home. What's the big deal, then?"

Mairu went a little red in the face. "We don't want him to do it every day! You have to come pick us up tomorrow and the days after that."

"I don't _have_ to do anything," Izaya replied coldly. "You're in a nice school with other nice kids—just make some friends and have their parents walk you, if you don't want to owe your teacher anything." Mairu looked like she wanted to start yelling, so he cut her off. "Go to sleep now. I won't be here to wake you up tomorrow morning and I don't want to have to deal with late slips or whatever so soon."

She threw him a nasty glare before storming off into the only bedroom, closing the door behind her.

Izaya thought about fixing himself a small dinner, but his back was stiff and his eyes stung from looking at numbers on a computer screen all day, and he could feel the tug of sleep at his temples, the beginning of a headache. He stared at the bedroom door for a few minutes, just to be sure that the girls wouldn't be getting out to go to the bathroom or anything, before undressing quickly.

He lied down on the lumpy couch with his back to the room and his blanket covering him up to his forehead, and soon enough sleep took him.

A sharp intake of breath woke him up four hours later—it took him a few seconds to realize it was his own, and that he could feel someone's gaze burning at his nape. He sat up and turned around, only to meet Kururi's tired eyes.

"Oh, it's you," Izaya exhaled. He drew the blanket back to his chest with an irritated tug. "What's going on?"

The girl stayed silent for a moment, her wide eyes still fixed on his. Izaya fought the need to look away as much as he could.

"Why did you wake me?" he finally asked, when he came to the conclusion that Kururi would probably be comfortable just looking at him in silence for another hour.

She made as if to grab his sleeve; Izaya couldn't help flinching back out of habit, and Kururi slowly let her hand fall back to her side.

"Are you really never going to pick us up from school?" she asked. Her voice, as always, was barely more than a whisper.

Izaya relaxed, and let annoyance seep through his words. "I can't. I already told you both. I have to work late in the evening and you're completely capable of crossing three streets on your own. I showed you the way to school and back and everything on Sunday."

Kururi nodded as if she had expected his answer. Which did little to appease Izaya's growing anger, because why had she woken him up at half past four in the morning if she already knew what he would say?

"Just have this teacher of yours walk you home, if it bothers you so much," he waved her off. "Since apparently you're not old enough to walk alone for ten minutes, even though you told me you were."

"He asks questions," Kururi said then.

Izaya rubbed his forehead, breath catching in his throat. "Of course he does," he let out slowly. "Everyone asks questions. You'll just have to get used to it." He lied back down, his neck aching at the uncomfortable angle of the couch's arm. "Go back to sleep now."

He closed his eyes and focused on the soft padding of Kururi's socked feet on the floor until he heard the bedroom door close once more.

Sleep evaded him after that, unsurprisingly. He turned off his alarm before it rang and stood up, making his way to the bathroom for a quick shower. The idea of breakfast stayed with him through the tepid caress of water on his skin and until he was finished drying himself, but he shoved it aside; there was enough to eat at the Awakusu-kai's offices anyway. He prepared the girls' lunches in a hurry and exited the apartment.

The air was cold outside. The sky was littered with pink and orange stains to the east but still a dark blue everywhere else. It was early, but still Izaya could hear doors opening and closing and see people making their way to the underground station, with rumpled suits or sometimes construction wear, yawning as they walked. He stepped quickly ahead of the growing crowd, hoping to catch a seat on the first train. He didn't, but he wasn't shoved against a door or forced to breathe in the sweat of another for the whole trip, so he counted himself lucky this time.

The sun was up by the time he got back to the surface. He nodded at the guard smoking outside the office entrance and stepped in, shrugging off his coat as he did.

The Awakusu-kai's office building, much like its head and executives, managed the not insignificant feat of screaming _yakuza_ while maintaining an air of almost-lawfulness. If anyone ever asked one of the group's leaders outright if they dabbled in illegal activities, they would receive a tight-lipped smile and a a reply of _we at the Awakusu always keep an open mind, but we would never think of breaking any laws, silly_. Probably along with an expensive cigarette and a subtle invitation to never contact them again. In the same way, the offices were physically toeing the line between good and proper and screamingly decadent. Tailored suits didn't quite manage to hide all the tattoos and scars of their owners; the walls were painted and rugged an abysmally normal taupe, but the rooms reeked of smoke and blood on a bad day, and some stains never really left the deep black of the couches' leather.

Clients were received in those offices. They were invited to sit and discuss their business, offered refreshments and friendly advice. Some of them were killed in there. Not often, no. Quite rarely, in fact. But Izaya knew it happened—had seen it happen—and could never shake off the feeling that this time, maybe, it would be his turn to bleed out on one of Akabayashi's treasured carpets.

He didn't dislike it. He rather enjoyed it, even, which was part of the reason why he never intended to take Shiki's offer in the first place. But beggars can't be choosers, as he had learned early in life, and Izaya had always been good at finding pleasure in unpleasurable places.

Really, if he had continued on his way to becoming a freelance journalist and informant, things would have been the same. He always did like the thrill of danger too much.

He sat down at the corner desk of Shiki's office, ignoring the leers some of the men had been throwing his way since he came in. The door closed on them with a satisfying _thump_.

"Good morning," came Slon's accented voice. He was sprawling in one of the armchairs, relaxing for a minute before work took off again. Vorona was leaning against a wall not far from him.

Izaya shot them a glance but didn't answer. Exhaustion tugged at his muscles, making him sluggish, and the tension that always followed him around the office had not improved his mood. Really— _why_ had Kururi felt the need to wake him up in the middle of the night?

"Pissy," Slon smiled, sly. Izaya frowned, a scathing answer making its way to his lips, but then the door opened once more.

Shiki walked in briskly, holding a stack of papers and wearing an expression that never bid anyone any good. The last of the tense knots along Izaya's spine came lose.

No one ever dared stare at him while Shiki was around.

"First client will be here in ten minutes," Shiki grunted. He dropped the papers on his desk and turned back to look at them. "Slon, stop hovering around and make yourself useful—Aozaki's been asking for you for an hour, don't pretend you didn't know. Nothing will happen to Miss Vorona while you're gone."

Despite the sting of the reprimand, Slon left with good grace. Izaya wished, not for the first time, that he would fall on his own feet and die.

Things went pretty much the same as they always did after that. Vorona hung around like a very tall and silent child, sometimes buried in a book, sometimes peeking at Shiki's files, sometimes staring at the clients until Izaya, who was seated directly behind the living space reserved for those meetings, could see the sweat dripping down their necks. Shiki talked and charmed and gave orders, spoke on the phone, went out, came back. He was never one to sit still behind a desk.

Izaya empathized fiercely.

He felt raw with unspent energy as his break came around. His legs were screaming at him to get up and leave, to run for a while, even to just change positions. The crick in his neck was ten times worse than it had been the previous night. But he couldn't move yet; a client was still here, babbling about some money trouble he was in, some kind of underground casino and- oh.

 _Oh_.

Shiki's eyes zeroed in on him.

Izaya carefully schooled his expression into one of blank amusement, repressing the hint of a shiver at his chin, the treacherous tug of glee at his mouth. He was sure nothing showed on his face. Still, Shiki had some sort of a sixth sense when it came to him, it seemed—and his gaze kept flickering between the client and Izaya until the man left, sweaty and shaking.

Silence hung for a moment. Vorona, bless her, either didn't notice the tension or chose to ignore it, and kept her little blond head firmly inside whatever mind-numbing economic essay she had picked up.

Shiki sucked in the last of his cigarette.

"I want you to look into this," he said evenly. Each of his words came out with a sliver of gray smoke. He was sitting some distance away, but with the way he looked at Izaya and the acrid smell permeating the air, Izaya felt as if he had breathed them out right into his face.

"Of course," Izaya replied amiably. "Amphisbaena, was it?"

Shiki didn't deign answer that question. Instead he looked at him blankly for another few seconds, before standing up and straightening his jacket.

"I'll have someone else look into those people I told you to check out," Shiki continued. "Just focus on this and tell me or Akabayashi about whatever you find."

"Akabayashi-san does hate drug dealers on his turf," Izaya said mildly.

Shiki's fingers twitched. "Don't push it, informant."

He left the office after that, face unchanged. Vorona shifted in her seat, but her eyes never once wandered toward Izaya.

It was sort of adorable, that Shiki kept calling him that. _Informant_. As though Izaya really was the freelancer he had told him he aspired to be when they first met more than a year ago—before his parents' death and that dreadful phone call. Before he had come running with his tail between his legs, all but begging Shiki to let him have this job, because he was twenty-two and had no degree and no legal experience and two little girls to try not to mess up.

It was debatable whether Shiki did it out of respect or just to remind him how low he had sunk. Either way, Izaya appreciated and hated it in turn, just as Shiki seemed to appreciate and hate him.

Izaya could have tried finding a legal job. Probably. He had told himself, without believing it much, that he would—that this thing he was doing for the Awakusu Group was only temporary, until he could get back on his feet and find something less likely to end up with his being buried alive in some remote place.

 _Amphisbaena_ , he thought, and this time he didn't smother his grin. His earlier restlessness forgotten, he took out his cellphone.

Izaya always did love the thrill of danger too much.

* * *

Shizuo made his decision the morning of his twenty-third day of teaching—not that he was counting.

He was awake before his alarm, basking in his overly warm room. Cold was never meant for him; he always preferred things on the hot side. Already he was enjoying the promise of summer heat that May would bring along, the scorch of the sun on his skin and the wind drying out the streets. His colleagues were mourning the loss of winter comforts; Shizuo was anticipating the slick of clean sweat along his back. The late night cigarettes he would smoke on his balcony half-naked while his neighbors tossed and turned in their beds, the buzz of fans and air conditioning familiar in his ears.

His day at school went ordinarily enough—which meant that only three Aoba-caused disasters happened, Anri barely shrieked when he called on her for answers, and Masaomi miraculously managed not to break anything.

Truly, he was thankful for the days when nothing broke.

But when everyone was gone around a quarter past four—Masaomi being led away last by his disgruntled father—and Mairu and Kururi turned toward him with an expectant look on their round faces, he steeled himself.

"I got something I need to talk to you both about," he said.

The change in them was instantaneous.

Mairu's face smoothed out of expression altogether. Her eyes were bright, though, shiny with the first spikes of anger and shame. Kururi's hand gripped hers until their skins became bloodless-white.

Shizuo almost let it go right then.

For the hundredth time Yagiri's voice rung in his mind, cold and harsh as her whole demeanor always was— _I didn't tell you before because their brother asked me not to_.

No matter how he looked at it, though, his feelings on the matter never changed. A teacher ought to know if one of their students was an _orphan_ , especially when the orphaning had happened so recently.

He sighed, longing to take out a cigarette right here in the middle of his classroom. Instead he ran a hand through his hair.

"Look, I'm not—I'm not going to ask you to, I don't know, _talk_ about all this, I guess." He wanted to cringe at how hesitant he was being. "But even though walking you girls home after class doesn't bother me, it does make me feel weird to know that your legal guardian can't take the time to come pick you up. That's just not right."

Kururi was half-hidden behind Mairu now, which was never a good thing. Mairu's anger was proportionate to her twin's discomfort.

"He has work," Mairu said then.

"I have work too," he replied, keeping his voice as gentle as he could. Even so, he felt the girl's flinch hit him like a physical blow. "If he can't come himself then at least have him write me a word to let you go home with someone he trusts."

Kururi made a sound halfway between a snort and a choked sob at that. Before he could decide what to make of it, Mairu opened her mouth again.

"Iza-nii doesn't _trust_ anyone," she declared, looking at Shizuo as though he'd lost his mind.

Shizuo almost groaned out loud. Tearing off his own toenails sounded less bothersome than dealing with those two.

"Listen," he said, and the final tone of his voice seemed to make the girls go cold all at once. Well, shit. "Look, I can't, that's not how this is supposed to work. I know your circumstances are" _sad_ "special, but I can't keep trusting someone to take care of you both when I've never seen them or heard directly from them. Please ask your brother to come meet me at least once. We can discuss this together and decide what to do from now on."

He had trouble meeting Mairu's eyes after that. Even Kururi—quiet, blank-faced Kururi—seemed to be screaming at him at this very moment, asking him how he could do that to them.

And this more than anything else comforted him in his decision to demand a meeting with their elusive brother. Something was going on here that no ice-cold word from headmistress Yagiri could make him turn a blind eye on.

"Their parents are dead," she had said, he remembered, as if she was talking about the weather. "Kicked the bucket a few months ago—car accident, I heard. Their mother was an up-and-coming businesswoman. It was all over the papers."

And Shizuo had remembered something then, the picture of a sharp-faced woman with long black hair and brown eyes, the name _Orihara Kyouko_ written under a tacky title ( _Car Accident Or Car Incident?_ ). He had found the very page when he came back home that day, lost in the pile of outdated newspapers he only bothered to throw out twice a year, and he spent a few long minutes staring at her attractive face. Trying to pin down the resemblance between her and her daughters, and failing. The twins must have taken after their father, who was mentioned in the article but whose picture wasn't shown.

So with all this in mind, he didn't back down under the glares of two sad little girls with their ink-stained hands and clean but old clothes. Secondhand clothes in perfect state but obviously not _theirs_ the way new ones would be. Hanging off their bodies awkwardly at their wrists, as if someone had tugged at the sleeves until they loosened too much—and Shizuo had never seen the girls pull at their clothes like that before, the way Mikado and Anri would.

The walk to their street was spent in tense silence. Shizuo took the lead for once, used to the ten-minute walk between the school and the rundown building in its empty gray slot.

Something, however, was different.

"He's here," Kururi whispered, and Mairu jumped as if she had yelled.

Shizuo looked up to the third floor, to the old metal door and the tiny window next to it. The room behind was lit softly.

He entertained the thought of just climbing up there with the girls and talking it all out. Shrugging that weight off his shoulders for good. But that would be breaking his students' privacy in a way he never wanted to. Just coming here with them every day felt like too much already.

"Don't forget to tell him," he told them a little sharply. Mairu glared at him. "I wanna see him before the week is over, or I'll have to make some calls he won't like."

They wouldn't understand what he was talking about. But their brother would, hopefully.

 _Some effort is always required_ , Shizuo thought on his way back. Even while looking over his students' works for the day, his mind was abuzz; he rightened shaky words with an absent hand, paper creasing under his fingers, and time and time again the face of the dead woman slipped into his mind. Orihara Kyouko.

The twins came to class the following day wearing very different looks. Mairu's disgruntlement was inked into the lines of her mouth and her forehead, into the jerk-like motions she made when anyone other than Kururi talked to her all morning. Kururi, meanwhile, was smiling full and open, as if something in her had finally been soothed.

"He's coming today," Mairu told him before lunch break.

Shizuo had never felt more out of place.

The last bell rang like a death sentence. Some of his kids were already ready to go, as always, and Shizuo snapped at those—Masaomi—who ran too fast for the exit. The task of quieting worried mothers was usually one he despised, but today he barely noticed their aggressive voices and demands. He talked to them with one eye stuck on the classroom's open doorway. Every new face who came in sight made him jump beneath his skin, even though he knew he didn't know most of the people who came to pick up their children. There were other classes in the school, other classes on this very floor, of course he knew that, but every man under thirty whose face he couldn't associate with a name became a new source of irritability in the fifteen minutes it took for his class to be empty.

Empty, save for the twins. Shizuo settled back behind his desk and waited.

"Whatever," Mairu said after the clock hit four thirty. She looked angry and unsurprised. "He's not coming."

"He is," Kururi whispered in a rare show of faith.

Mairu grunted, turned her back to them both, and made to grab her bag and shoes from under her desk.

A knock broke the silence then. Shizuo raised his head as the door opened without waiting for an answer—and Shizuo felt something like a fool for wondering at so many faces earlier, trying to find family resemblance and failing.

Mairu and Kururi didn't look a thing like their mother, because Orihara Kyouko's face went to her son instead, in all of its fine and classically handsome glory. He was a thin man; and it felt wrong to call him a _man_ instead of a _kid_ , because he was younger than Shizuo, younger even than he would have expected, or at least he looked like it. Scrawny limbs clad in plain black clothes, circles under his eyes and tension at the edge of his chin, he walked inside without faltering, as if he had been coming here since the beginning of term.

His eyes met Shizuo's almost at once, bypassing the girls entirely—and the man smiled.

"You must be Shizu-chan," he said pleasantly. And no one could have missed the edge to his voice or the glint of sharp malice in his brown eyes.

Shizuo felt something he hadn't felt in years: the heat of _dislike_ in his belly rising like a living thing, thinning his mouth and clenching his fists until he could feel his desktop crack and bristle under his palms.

"Iza-nii," Kururi said then.

The simple joy in her voice brought Shizuo out of his trance. His shuffled a few papers to cover the break in the wood of his desk, and cleared his throat.

"I'm Heiwajima Shizuo," he said, walking around the desk to stand before the girls' brother—the one he had been envisioning punching in the face just a second ago, _god_ —and extending his hand.

The man gave him a thin smile and didn't take it. "Orihara Izaya," he answered. "Here to pick up my sisters, as you so nicely requested."

"Well," Shizuo grunted. "You have to admit that it's a pretty unique situation."

They stared at each other for a minute after that. Shizuo saw Mairu fidget in the corner of his eyes, looking between the two of them as if they were putting on an interesting show instead of just glaring daggers.

"So are we going, or what?" she said finally.

"Do you have everything you need?" Orihara asked her. She nodded ruefully. "Good. Let's go, I don't have a lot of time."

"Wait a second," Shizuo said a little louder than he wanted to. "I have a few things to discuss with you."

"I'm very sorry, Heiwajima-san," Orihara replied in a voice so sweet it made Shizuo's teeth ache. "I have my work to return to, you see, and I'm sure you're very busy yourself" the corner of his eyes crinkled, as if he'd heard the best joke of his week yet, "so I won't take any more of your time. Thank you for taking care of them, if it's a bother I'll have someone else do it—I'm sure they have lots of friends by now whose parents won't mind dropping them off on their way."

 _Them_ , he had said. Not their names. They, them, "my sisters". And Orihara talked as if he didn't know a single thing about the twins, and didn't care as long as they stayed out of his business. Shizuo's throat tightened in a rage he hadn't felt since his middle school days, and he took a step forward.

This time, Orihara looked surprised as well as mildly irritated.

"Now listen here, Orihara-"

"Please," Orihara said. "Call me Izaya."

Shizuo groaned, low. "Fine, _Izaya_ ," and the lack of a proper honorific was meant as an insult, but the man's smiled widened to border on glee, as if Shizuo had given him praise, "we need to talk. Now. Surely you can spare a few minutes of your precious time."

"I really can't," Ori- Izaya said, voice apologetic and eyes anything but.

"Not even for you sisters? Your _charges_?"

Izaya's playful-neutral expression stayed in place. Shizuo could've been talking about the weather, for all any onlooker might have known, but somehow the air grew colder and even less friendly than it had been a minute ago. Shizuo felt the difference like a sharp tug at his insides.

"Very well," Izaya said. And he put his hands in the pockets of the worn black jeans he was wearing, the picture of uncaring.

Silence hung for a moment, as Shizuo fumbled with his words. Damn it, this was the reason why he always let Celty do the talking all these years—Shizuo sucked something dreadful at expressing himself, and God only knew what could come out of Shinra's mouth in any given situation.

Shizuo cleared his throat. "As you're surely aware by now, I've been walking Mairu and Kururi home for the past three weeks. Since the start of term, actually. And while it doesn't _bother_ me personally, and I saw nothing in the school's rules saying it was forbidden, it's still impractical and a little inappropriate, don't you think?"

"I don't see why," Izaya replied easily. "Unless you're _planning_ to do something inappropriate, in which case rest assured that you'll live to regret it."

Despite the flash of horror and unadulterated _rage_ that went through Shizuo's entire body at these words, a small corner of his mind quieted. If anything, at least Izaya wasn't a hundred percent indifferent to the girls' fate.

He forced the anger down as much as he could, and kept a tight grip on his temper as he talked again. "Can you really not spare the time to just come pick them up every day? Or, I don't know, once or twice a week? I can try to arrange something with a parent of one of the other kids the rest of the time…"

"I'm awfully sorry, Heiwajima-san," Izaya said. His voice prickled along Shizuo's arms like tiny needles, and he repressed a shiver. "I took the day off especially to answer your request, but my boss made it patently clear that doing so again would not be appreciated."

"Who's your boss?" Shizuo asked then. "I can tell them-"

"No, you can't," Izaya cut him off, with a steely edge to his voice that had not been here before.

And despite the alarms that rang in Shizuo's head at this, he could feel that insisting would get him nowhere. Just like this entire conversation, really.

"Would you at least be reachable if something ever happened?" he asked, resisting the urge to rub his forehead. The need for a smoke was like literal fire inside him, a painful ache at his temple and the tip of his fingers.

Izaya hesitated for a second. Something went through his eyes that Shizuo couldn't catch long enough to decipher—it could have been embarrassment, or fear, or annoyance. It could have been anything.

"Yes," he said finally. "I'll give you my number—just don't call unless it's really important." _Don't call, ever_ , was what he wanted to say.

Shizuo never intended to call anyway. If anything happened to the girls, he would call social services. Not this older brother who cared more about his boss's opinion of him than his sisters' well-being.

He took the crumpled piece of surprisingly expensive paper Izaya gave him nonetheless, ignoring the reflex-like need to flinch back when his fingers met Izaya's cold ones.

Izaya still gave him a knowing smile. "Bad circulation," he said amiably.

Shizuo was about to reply—he didn't know what he wanted to say, but something would _not_ let him allow this man to have the last word—when Kururi walked up to her brother, and slowly slid her small hand into his own. Or tried to.

Izaya jerked away as if he had been burned. Kururi watched him with the same plain expression she always wore, hand in the air, until at last she let it fall down. She and Izaya stared at each other for a very long second, before he turned around a little shakily, throwing Shizuo one last glare.

"Satisfied?" Mairu asked once Izaya had left the room without waiting for her or her sister.

 _Not at all_ , Shizuo didn't say—but he could have, because the I-told-you-so look Mairu threw him on her way out hit him like a slap in the face.

* * *

"Is he always like this?" Iza-nii asked once they were almost all the way to the apartment.

It took Mairu a moment to understand what he was talking about, as always.

"Your teacher," he added. He wasn't smiling, but Mairu thought there was something in his eyes that wasn't entirely displeased.

"Pretty much," she answered.

He hummed thoughtfully. Mairu rolled her eyes at him and turned back to Kuru-nee, who hadn't let go of her hand since they had left the classroom. She tightened her grip and gave her a smile she knew was reassuring. Kururi blinked twice in wonder.

Mairu didn't really understand why her sister insisted on trying to initiate touch with their brother when he had made it clear, if not in words then in actions, that he didn't like it or even appreciate the sentiment. At the same time, though—she knew why.

When she closed her eyes at night, she could still almost-feel the soft grasp of their mom's hand in hers, or the strangling hugs their dad gave her every day.

"Heiwajima Shizuo," Iza-nii muttered while fishing in his pockets for the key to their house. The metallic sound the door made as it unlocked jarred something within her. A bird gave a thrill, somewhere above them.


	2. Chapter 2

Sorry for the late update, I hope you enjoy reading.  
English is still very much my second language and this story is still very much not beta-ed, so I apologize in advance for any mistake or typo.

* * *

 **Some Required Effort  
** **Part II**

There was never much to do for Shizuo on Fridays. Class didn't end earlier, but in the staffroom he could feel the exhaustion like a tense veil hanging over every teacher in the vicinity. Most of their efforts were aimed at finishing the week's coffee with single-minded ignorance of how tasteless the last of the dregs were; by an unspoken rule, fresh coffee was only ever brought on Monday mornings. It had taken some time for Shizuo to realize that he didn't _have_ to bring some himself every week. Mikage had laughed off his embarrassment, feral, with one of those quick and vicious pats on the back she only ever gave to him and to Head Teacher Yagiri—who allowed them for a reason he couldn't fathom.

Even more palpable than the teachers' fatigue was the students', though. They came in that morning a few minutes later than they did the rest of the week, trembling more, talking louder. Their frail limbs shook and waved with the excited abandon of overwork. Masaomi bumped into a shelve as he walked in without even noticing it, although the strength of the impact was enough to make a couple of books fall and surely bruise his shoulder. But he kept talking at Mikado as if nothing happened.

Mairu and Kururi entered just as Shizuo was picking up the fallen books from the floor. He expected them to make a face at him—or at least, he expected Mairu to do so—but their heads were turned to each other. He recognized the dismissal for what it was and left them be, heading instead to the front of the class so he could call for silence and take attendance.

The first part of the day went on, lazy and unperturbed. Aoba and Anri stared absently at the window for most of it, but Shizuo could hardly blame them. It was a mid-May morning, warm and sunny, even a little stifling. Any other day he might have called for their attention to be back on their work, but even he could feel drowsiness at the unexpected warmth, and he knew that it would be pointless. He didn't think any of them would be able to focus.

By the time lunch break came around barely half of his students still had their eyes on the kanas they were practicing—and most of those who did were blinking sleepily at their papers, pencils long forgotten. All of their heads went up when the bell rang, though, and conversations picked up immediately from where they left off during mid-morning break, as though the hour and a half that followed had never happened.

Shizuo gave up on barking at them to walk out of the room quietly; the kids took out their lunches hurriedly and ran out as if physically drawn toward the sun bathing the playground area. His only consolation was that he could hear neighboring classes do the same, and not a single teacher raise their voice to call for quiet and better attitude. He bent his neck to loosen the knots at his nape, eyes closed. Before long the only noise he could hear was the distant chatter coming from the open window as almost all of the school's students settled outside to eat and play.

He wasn't entirely surprised to see Mairu and Kururi still sitting at their desks when he opened his eyes. He rose to his feet and walked toward them, swallowing against the tension in his chest that told him he shouldn't be attached enough to be able to guess when they weren't feeling well.

"Everything all right?" he asked once he reached them.

Kururi kept her head down toward her open lunchbox, but Mairu gave him a fast glance and a nod, apparently unable to keep her eyes off her sister for more than a second. He sighed.

"Okay. I'll be in the staffroom for lunch, don't hesitate to come see me if you need something." He hesitated. "Going outside for a bit might do you good."

He got no response apart from Kururi's hand clenching slowly into a fist. Mairu made a small sound at the sight, a bit too close to a whimper.

Walking out of the room felt a little too much like he was leaving part of his heart behind—the part that held all his ability to focus while he was worried.

"What's wrong?" Mikage asked him when she saw his face.

He took a seat next to her, taking out a sandwich. "Nothing."

But it wasn't twenty minutes later that the tense call inside Shizuo's chest was answered by Mairu walking inside the room. Her slippers slid on the floor with every hurried step.

"Kuru-nee's sick," she said, but Shizuo was already out of his chair and walking to the door, his hand catching the girl's shoulder on the way. Mairu didn't flinch at the unexpected contact. She was already so tense she was shaking, all of her child's focus set on outpacing Shizuo to the classroom.

He could still hear the high-pitched yells of the children playing outside, crawling through the open window like hot air. Kururi didn't seem to have moved an inch since the last time he had seen her. Shizuo knelt next to her chair and tilted his head until he could see her upturned mouth and the unfocused gaze she directed at her lunch. She hadn't touched it. From this close he could finally hear the effort in her breaths, see the shine of sweat on her pale skin and the contrast it made to the bright flush sitting high on her cheeks.

"Kururi," he called, with the softest voice he could muster. And then, when she failed to react in any way, "Don't you want to eat?"

Mairu slid her hand into her sister's. She moved, finally, tightening her fingers and lifting her head to the side to meet Shizuo's eyes. Something sharp tugged at his heart. She looked utterly miserable.

"How do you feel?" He wanted to put a hand to her forehead, feel for himself the fever he was sure she had. But Kururi was holding tight onto Mairu's hand, as if bracing herself, and he didn't dare. "Do you want to go to the nurse's office?"

"… No." She shook her head as she said it.

"You're sick," Shizuo replied in what he hoped was a comforting voice. "Even if you feel like you can stay in class, I can't take the risk of letting the other kids catch what you have. Do you understand?"

She frowned at him, considering his words. After a while she nodded, and her grip on Mairu's hand slackened.

He smiled. "Okay. I'll walk you there. The nurse—Touka-sensei—she's very nice. There's nothing to worry about." _Nothing to worry about_ , he repeated to himself.

Kururi nodded and stood up. Shizuo wanted to tell her to eat something before going, for fear of her collapsing on the way down to the nurse's office; but he wasn't sure _what_ was wrong, or how wrong it was. Her voice sounded fine, and she didn't seem disoriented. Still the knowledge that something was hurting her sat deep inside his mind, and he felt himself panic more with every step he saw her take—every second of complete silence in which she neglected to let her ailment be heard or seen.

He knocked on the door to Kuzuhara's office with his right hand, the left firmly stuck inside his pocket, taking away from himself the temptation to guide each girl physically. Mairu was standing close behind her sister, maybe too close for comfort considering Kururi's state, but Shizuo didn't have the heart to tell her to step away.

Kuzuhara ushered them in after a single surprised glance at Shizuo. She obviously didn't feel the same need for restraint as he did—her hand immediately went to Kururi's forehead and then the side of her neck, even before she was finished leading her to one of the beds.

"I'll take it from here," she smiled at Shizuo. "You and Mairu-chan should go back upstairs-"

"No!" Mairu yelled, and made as if to knock papers off Kuzuhara's desk in her anger. Shizuo grabbed her arm before he could help himself, but she didn't react. "I want to stay with Kuru-nee!"

He'd never heard her sound like this, even with all the times it seemed she was the one to voice what Kururi felt on top of her own thoughts. She didn't struggle against his hold or try to throw anything else, but her mouth was torn into the most miserable frown he had ever seen on her, and her eyes shone with desperate tears.

"I don't want to leave her alone!"

"She's not alone," Shizuo said, too fast and too strongly. "Kuzuha- Touka-sensei is gonna stay with her."

Mairu turned her wide eyes to him, and grunted, " _Not the same_ ," unspoken terror giving weight to her voice in a way that made Shizuo's heart turn in on itself.

"She'll be fine," Kuzuhara said softly, a little lost. "I'll keep her here for an hour or so, see how she's doing. I'll call you girls' brother if she has to be taken home."

Kuzuhara's voice was soothing, but Mairu flinched as if she had physically struck her. Resentment coiled itself inside Shizuo's guts as the face of Orihara Izaya flashed through his mind, sharp enough to cut itself at the edge of the man's dishonest smile and the uncaring glint of his eyes. Silence spread over the tension in the room. His eyes never left the unhappy slouch of Mairu's shoulders as her little face stayed turned to her sister's, who was watching her in silence.

He made himself smile, and released the hold he had on her arm to push her toward him. "It would be bad if you fell sick too, right?" he asked her. Mairu only glanced at him briefly before straining her neck to look back at her twin, but he insisted. "She won't be alone. You're still in the same building. Kururi is a big girl, but she needs to rest, and she can't do that with too many people around."

Mairu released a distressed sound, more whine than word.

"It's okay," Shizuo murmured. "Touka-sensei will make sure she's fine. You should come back upstairs with me so you can tell your sister about all the stuff she missed in class. I'm sure she doesn't want to get behind on everything we're doing."

Kururi nodded at that. Shizuo felt the tension leave Mairu's body under his fingers, like a great wave had swept it away all at once. She lowered her head in silence.

"Go wash your hands, Mairu-chan," Kuzuhara said kindly. Mairu shifted on her feet for a second, but finally moved toward the sink at the corner of the room.

Shizuo let out a breath. "Thanks, Kuzuhara," he muttered. She laughed softly at that.

"I told you to call me Touka." Then, more seriously, "I'll keep you updated after classes. Now get out so I can take care of Kururi-chan in peace."

He flushed a little, nodding awkwardly. Mairu was waiting for him just outside the room. They took the stairs back up to the second floor, and Shizuo stayed with her inside the classroom. Mikage came in a few minutes after that, bringing the lunch he had forgotten with her. He didn't touch it, and neither did Mairu hers. They spent the rest of midday break in each other's wordless company, listening to the excited cries coming from the playground and the rushes of warm wind that made the green curtains dance away from the windows.

The remaining hours of class that followed were a blur. Shizuo gave up on actually making anyone work around two and a half in the afternoon and let the kids loose on the art tools. After about ten different students asked him what they should draw, he simply told them to draw whatever they wanted to be doing instead of class, and got Masaomi's obnoxious cheers for his efforts. The whole thing wasn't extremely professional, and he would have to clean up about eight different tables of paint and marker stains, but he at least got the satisfaction of seeing Mairu start drawing almost immediately and Aoba engage her in mindless chatter. He let himself sit down on his desk and watch the exhausted chaos unfold before him, smiling when one of the kids ran up to show him their work, correcting the kanji of their names that he insisted they write at the back of each of their pieces.

By the time the first tired parents and guardians came to pick up their progeny, no one had put anything back in its place. Shizuo waved off the bashful glances some of the parents gave him upon seeing their child drop their brush or crayon to run toward them, assuring that he didn't mind doing the clean up. The room emptied a lot quicker than it ever did the rest of the week.

"Do you wanna help me with this?" Shizuo asked Mairu, gesturing to the mess around him.

"Alright," she said—the first non-hostile thing he had heard from her all day.

In the end, they were only about two-thirds done with picking up fallen markers and tubes of water-based paint when Kuzuhara knocked on the door and let herself in. Shizuo straightened up. His attempt at a smile fell when he saw the concerned frown on her face.

"Is Kururi all right?" he asked immediately. His face warmed when he noticed that he'd cut her right as she opened her mouth. "Huh, sorry."

"It's okay," she smiled. "Kururi-chan is still downstairs. I think she has a stomach flu—she threw up a couple times. Her temperature is a little high and she's dehydrated, but it's nothing bad. I managed to make her eat some yogurt and she fell asleep."

"Oh… That's good, then." It didn't explain the crease between Kuzuhara's eyebrows, however.

"Yes." Kuzuhara smiled at Mairu, who had walked up to stand close to Shizuo's side. Her small hand crept up to tug at his sleeve in an unconscious reach for comfort.

And then Shizuo remembered. "Wait, didn't you say you were gonna send her home if she didn't feel better?"

"That's the problem. I can't seem to reach her brother."

His breath caught in his chest.

"I tried texting him," she continued, oblivious, "but I kept getting told that my messages couldn't reach him, so then I called and apparently the number isn't in service at all. You have his number, right?" she asked.

Shizuo snapped out of his daze. "Yeah, I…"

"Is it the same as this one?" She pulled her phone out of the pocket of her white coat, and showed him the most recent entry in her call history. Shizuo's fingers fiddled clumsily with his own cell until he found what he needed— _Orihara Izaya_ staring at him from his contact list.

It wasn't even close to the number Kuzuhara was holding up before him.

 _What the fuck,_ he thought, and tried not to let the panicked anger flooding his blood show on his face.

"It's just a mistake," he said instead, his hand coming up to rest on Mairu's shoulder. He thought he should look at her, see the disappointment or sorrow or lack of surprise on her face, but he couldn't. "I'll call him, sort it all out."

"You sure?" She frowned at him.

"Yeah, no problem. You can go, I'll close the office when I leave."

She looked at him for a second, hesitant. "Okay," she said finally, her forehead smoothing over. "If I find anything out of place when I come back on Monday…"

"You won't," he replied, but there was no heat in it. Years ago he would've flown into a rage at being suspected of stealing anything. But he could hear the trust in her words and the amused lilt of her voice, and his reflexive defiance quieted under the weight of Celty's advice over the years. _Not everyone is out to get you. You're allowed to take risks_.

He found Kururi blinking the weight of sleep away from her eyes in Kuzuhara's office. "Hey," he said, kneeling next to her. "How do you feel?"

She watched him silently for so long that worry started making its way up his spine once more. "Vomity," she said at last.

He nodded. "Touka-sensei said to give this to you if you still feel nauseous when you wake up." He gave her glass full of water mixed with unappealing beige powder. The thing looked like mud and smelled badly enough to make him turn his nose, but Kururi smiled widely and drank it in one go. He resisted the urge to help her to her feet after that, and instead watched over her for any sign of dizziness.

Once he was satisfied she wasn't going to fall over while walking, he pushed her shoes toward her and put her bag over his shoulder.

"We're going home, then?" Mairu asked.

"No," he replied, and surprised himself with how immediate his answer had been.

The more he thought about it, the righter he felt about his decision, though. He wouldn't walk them home only to drop them at what he knew was an empty apartment in a decrepit street. Kururi needed attention, which Orihara Izaya wouldn't give her, since he apparently didn't feel the need to even give his sisters' school the right number to call him if anything ever happened.

So this was how low his charges were on the ladder of Izaya's priorities. Shizuo's fingers brushed against his cellphone in the pocket of his jeans, wondering for a second if the number that man had given him was even the real one. He hadn't looked like he was lying, back then.

"One of my housemates is a doctor," he told the girls, who were watching him with wide eyes. "He should be home now, so I'll take you to my place, if that's okay with you both. I'll call your brother once we're there."

"Fine," Kururi said, her voice still soft with sleep. Mairu's hand crawled into hers.

Shizuo shot a quick text to Celty, telling her not to come pick him up as she usually did. Then he called a cab, knowing that the apartment he shared with Shinra and her was too far for two tired school girls to travel by foot. Mairu seemed excited on the way, blabbering on and on at the poor driver, who took her chatter in good grace and indulged her questions about whether he had driven criminals and gangsters around. Shizuo made sure to give him a large tip once they reached their destination.

Shinra met him in the hallway as he was closing the door behind the girls and telling them where to leave their shoes.

"Shizuo," he said, surprised, "I didn't expect you to be back so early." Then his eyes fell on Mairu and Kururi, and his face took on the scrunched up expression he wore when he was thinking very hard about something.

"Don't hurt your head," Shizuo shot him, but Shinra was already walking toward Kururi and putting a hand on her forehead, dragging her into the living room as she blinked sleepily up at him and his always startling demeanor.

Mairu followed suit, dropping her bag in the middle of the hallway. Shizuo picked it up and put it to the side. He plucked his phone out of his pocket; the screen unlocked to where he had turned it off. Orihara Izaya.

Leaning against the wall as Shinra's kind-voiced chatter washed over him from the other side of the apartment, he let the anger power through him in a single flash, just enough to give him the energy to press the call button and lift the device to his ear.

* * *

Izaya's phone started buzzing late in the afternoon. He only noticed because the soft sound it made inside the pocket of his coat was different from his breathing pattern. Shiki's office-living-room hybrid wasn't that hot, but Izaya was still sweltering. The current meeting had been going on for an hour; the windows were closed, curtains drawn shut to avoid onlookers, and stuffy warmth rolled inside the room like a giant crawling creature, pressing against Izaya and making sweat gather at his back, his armpits, the inside of his elbows. He had been forced to take off his coat a few minutes after Shiki's business partner had arrived—and he could feel Sloan staring from the other side of the room, his eyes stuck on the hollow of his neck and, he knew, lower down his torso every time he straightened his back. He should straighten his back. Roll his shoulders, breathe in deeply, cough. Let out some of the tensions assembling between his shoulder blades where cloth stuck to skin, almost chafing from the sweat.

Izaya didn't straighten his back.

It took him an embarrassing while to realize the buzzing inside his coat pocket was a call rather than a text, but it did very little to diffuse his confusion, because the only person who ever called or texted him was Shiki, and Shiki was _right here_.

The number wasn't hidden; it sat bright and open on the touch screen of the phone the Awakusu-kai had given him once he's started working for them instead of with them. Nakura had only contacted him instead of the other way around once so far, and it was via a masked number. And, almost automatically, his thoughts slid back to his sisters' teacher whom he had given this number to—but he wasn't supposed to call. That was what Izaya _thought_ they'd agreed on back then. The number was a compromise, Heiwajima wasn't supposed to actually call.

"Orihara Izaya," he said, picking up about two seconds before the call was redirected to his voicemail. He turned his voice as snappy as he could without dragging anyone's attention to him. As he made his way to the door and into the hallway behind he could feel Sloan's gaze over his neck like a layer of grease on his skin. He closed the door without looking back.

 _"This is Heiwajima,"_ Heiwajima said uselessly.

Izaya's lips tugged into a smile at his voice, his mind flashing for an instant to the face of the man as he had decided to hold him in contempt the moment he saw him. He felt the first rush of battle-ready blood to his face and the sharp electric current of his body settling for a fight. He was alone in the corridor, free to enjoy the caress of fresh air Shiki had denied entrance to and the heady feeling of rushing straight into danger.

He didn't know why an elementary school teacher of all people should be dangerous. He just knew Heiwajima _was_.

"What do you want?" he said, once he was sure the pause between Heiwajima's question and his own answer had been enough to rile him up.

 _"Shit,"_ Heiwajima breathed, and something heavy uncoiled inside Izaya's belly at the weight of anger behind the soft-spoken curse, but then, _"Kururi's sick."_

It all went crashing down. Izaya's fingers tightened reflexively on the plastic case of his phone, too slick from the heat to do anything but slide on the surface and push it out of alignment against his ear. His heartbeat slowed too quickly, and suddenly he was just standing alone in an empty corridor, sweat cooling on his skin, and in nothing more than his jeans and T-shirt.

He opened his mouth, but Heiwajima decided he was done waiting for an answer. _"I live with a doctor, so I took her and Mairu to my place. You need to come pick them up. I'll text you the address."_

There was a pause.

 _"You_ are _gonna come, right?"_ This time his voice had the ice-cold feel of disgust in it. Izaya felt himself rise up in answering spite even with the erratic beat of cold blood in his veins.

 _Shizu-chan said he'll call people you don't like if you don't come pick us up tomorrow_ , Mairu had told him weeks ago, the day before he and Heiwajima met. "Yes," Izaya answered, even though he knew he couldn't afford to, knew Shiki was expecting results he wasn't giving because of his own plans, knew the bitter taste in his mouth was due to the kind of apprehension he could never enjoy.

He hung up before Heiwajima did and clenched his hand around his phone rather than let it shake.

Shiki's eyes flew to him when he came back. The man in front of him—a business partner for the art gallery that acted as a front to the Awakusu offices, not a client—was still speaking. Behind him, Sloan was reading into a computer file. Vorona wasn't here today, meaning Egor or Akabayashi was baby-sitting her.

Izaya waited until the gallery's administrator stopped talking and stepped toward Shiki. His heart beat against his throat in the most uncomfortable way, the way that made the skin there pulse visibly, but Shiki's eyes never wandered down and Sloan didn't have a direct line of sight anymore.

"I need to leave for today," Izaya offered with the best apologetic smile he could muster. "Emergency."

"I wonder," Shiki said. He didn't elaborate.

Izaya knew Shiki was frustrated with him, maybe even angry. He had been toeing the line of treason with Amphisbaena— _was_ planning on treason by involving himself with Amphisbaena—and though Shiki didn't know about his intentions, he definitely didn't like his methods. Hiding how he was getting his intel on the drug drops and underground casinos wasn't how he was allowed to work anymore. Shiki wouldn't let it go on for too long.

He had to speed up his little chats with Nakura.

"I can get some more work done on Sunday," Izaya said placatingly. "But I really need to go now."

Shiki watched him for a moment, brow creased in something that strangely enough looked more like concern than suspicion. It disappeared too fast, though, and soon the tip of his fingers, yellowed over time by the imprint of tobacco on his skin, started tapping rhythmically against his thigh.

Shiki's more legal business partner shifted on the leather couch opposite him. The noise Sloan's fingers made against the keyboard of his laptop fell into silence. Now not even the too-hot press of the room's still air could alleviate the cold seeping through Shiki's expression and, it seemed, Izaya's very pores.

Izaya murmured, "I'll take my leave then," and picked up his coat without looking at anyone. Shiki's voice came to him again once he was opening the door.

"Is it about your family?"

Izaya's chest constricted around the knot of panic in his heart that was born the day his parents died, and he closed the door without answering Shiki's threat.

It took him the entire walk to the station to calm himself down enough to think about looking at where exactly he was going. He took out his phone and stared at the address Heiwajima had sent him. It wasn't too far from where he was. Kawagoe Highway, Ikebukuro. Maybe a twenty-minute walk.

Turning his back to the gaping entrance of the underground station, Izaya began walking.

The still-high sun beat against his back and made the skin of his left arm dampen where it was holding his coat up against his hip. He relished in the feeling of open air and drowned himself in the sounds of car horns and the yells of street salesmen, passed by the Russia Sushi signboard where Simon was speaking loudly to a couple of customers without seeing him. And all the while, he let the bottled tension inside of him focus on a single target instead of the fear ringing in his head from Shiki's parting words.

Heiwajima Shizuo.

By the time he reached the entrance of the rather new apartment building behind Kawagoe, all his heart felt was the regular thrum of anger, much easier to deal with than anything else in the world.

There were three names on the plate next to the door he rang at. Heiwajima's was at the bottom, below a foreigner's name written in both roman letters and katakana and another that made faint familiarity blink itself into his brain, but before he could wonder any deeper a woman opened the door.

 _The foreigner_ , he thought, briefly eyeing the shape of her face. He smiled.

"I'm Orihara Izaya," he said, channeling his irritation into the sweetest tone he could produce. "My sisters are here, I believe."

The woman opened her mouth, and made an aborted gesture with her hands. But her breath didn't change its pattern to accommodate speech, nor did she look like she was at a loss for words. She simply smiled back at him and stepped aside to let him in, before taking guest slippers out of a closet and handing them to him.

She didn't, or more likely couldn't, speak.

Izaya filed this knowledge into his head as he did everything about everyone he met, and stepped to where the hallway opened into a bright living-room and kitchen.

Heiwajima rose from his seat when he entered. His lips thinned on the same frustration Izaya felt curling inside his throat, and when their eyes met the only thing holding Izaya's smile in place was the rigid coldness running through him, sharpening his tongue until he could feel the bite of the words he wanted to throw at this man.

"I thought the girls looked familiar," a cheerful voice cut through the tension, and a bespectacled man wearing a plain blue shirt entered his field of vision.

Confusion mixed with panicked familiarity made their way to the front of Izaya's thoughts, but the _What_ on his lips died as his gaze fell on Kishitani Shinra's knowing smirk.

He could feel the blood leaving his face.

"You're Orihara-"

"Izaya." The word ripped itself from his tongue with such force that even that air-headed brute of a teacher seemed thrown off by it. Izaya clamped down on his feelings until the numbness settled, disgusting, but enough to make his voice stop wavering. "Shinra. It's been years. I didn't notice your name at the door, my apologies."

Shinra tilted his head, looking at him in the same way that had made him feel special in middle school but now only made the need to run creep up his legs. It was worse than waiting for anger. It was waiting for judgment.

The woman moved then, signing something with her hands. Shinra's assessing eyes immediately went to her.

"Orihara-kun was my junior in middle school," he explained, and Izaya's back unknotted itself so fast that he almost stumbled in his dizziness. "He's quite the hard person to forget."

"Never mind that," Heiwajima growled, oblivious. "We need to talk, Orihara."

"I told you to call me Izaya," Izaya replied. Heiwajima's fingers clenched into fists, his blunt nails biting into his palms. It was a very satisfying sight. "Or I'll just call you Shizu-chan, like my sisters do."

"Do you think this is the time for _jokes_?"

"You called me, and I came here as fast as I could," Izaya drawled. His eyes wandered around the room and as far away from Shinra's as they could. "I don't know why you're so angry."

Heiwajima took a large step toward him, looking very pissed. Pissed enough to raise a hand on him, maybe. Izaya smiled and shifted his footing.

"The school nurse tried to get in touch with you all afternoon," Heiwajima said, now almost directly in his face. "Kururi came to school sick. She vomited several times. _You gave the wrong number_." And then he closed his mouth and held his breath, his eyes boring furiously into Izaya's, waiting for him to react, to tell him he had deliberately given fake information because he obviously didn't care.

In truth, he had forgotten.

The girls were already enrolled at that school when Kyouko and Shirou died. In the daze that had followed their burial and Izaya's search for a place bigger than the one-room students' apartment he was living in at the time, it hadn't occurred to him that he should have notified the head teacher of his new phone number—given by Shiki when he had started working for him. Or maybe it had, and he just hadn't remembered once the girls were somewhat settled with him.

It would be easy enough a blunder to explain. Heiwajima obviously knew of his family's circumstances, even with how hard Izaya had insisted Yagiri Namie didn't share that information. It was only natural, though, and he had expected it as soon as Mairu had told him her teacher _cared_. Izaya could play the card of the newly orphaned young man trying to get used to taking care of children, if only his entire being didn't revolt at the idea.

"I didn't think it would ever come up," he said instead, and found delight when a shudder of rage shook Heiwajima. "They can take care of themselves."

"They're _six_ , are you out of your goddamn mind? They should at least have a cellphone to contact you with if anything every happens, seeing how little time you seem to actually _spend_ with them!"

"Kururi-chan is sleeping in the guest room," Shinra cut in, "and Mairu-chan is with her, but I don't know if she's awake or not, so you should probably keep it down if you're going to argue here." His eyes flew between the two of them as though watching a very interesting tennis game. Next to him the woman—Celty—waited with her arms folded over her chest and her gaze fixed on Heiwajima. A worried frown creased her delicate features, but even that wasn't enough to disturb the soft affection she directed at the man currently spitting disgust at Izaya's face.

Exhaustion sped through Izaya's body and mind like an arrow, and suddenly every ounce of fun he had dragged out of the situation fell lifeless. _Enough_.

"I'll be taking them home, then," he announced, and turned to Celty with a question in his eyes until she snapped out of her surprise and started walking to what was probably the guest room door.

"They're sleeping," Heiwajima said, stepping after him. His arm rose abruptly, as if to grab Izaya's shoulder. Izaya stepped away, and Heiwajima closed his hand on nothing. His face didn't change, though. "At least let them rest for a while, they need it. Not that you'd know," he added viciously.

And that was it.

"I'm tired of this," Izaya said, stopping in his tracks and turning to look at Heiwajima. He was already uncomfortably close for the two of them, but he leaned in even closer. "I don't want you anywhere near my sisters again."

Heiwajima's face twisted in confusion. "I'm their teacher," he said.

"Yes," Izaya agreed softly. "Their teacher, and nothing more. I'll arrange something with my boss, free myself in the afternoon to come pick them up, even in the morning to make sure they get to school in one piece. You'll get your freedom back. Isn't that what you wanted?"

He didn't know if he could do that, didn't know if Shiki would consider this request the last straw into Izaya's basketful of liberties. But it was worth it, if only for the red that flushed Haiwajima's face and the horror in his eyes.

" _Izaya_ ," his voice rumbled out of him like thunder, "that's not what I meant-"

"I don't _care_ ," Izaya said. "I want you out of my family business and back where you belong. You're just a teacher, and a new one had that. Started just this term, right?" Heiwajima blinked in surprise, mouth still open around his outrage. "I wonder who you think you are, lecturing me, _threatening me_. Don't make me file a formal complaint to Yagiri-san."

It wasn't enough, it wasn't nearly enough. Izaya wanted to do _more_ , wanted to drive the fear of himself into Heiwajima Shizuo to the point where that man would never be able to sleep another night without thinking about him. Heiwajima had paled, and his mouth had closed on tight fury even as Celty put a comforting hand on his shoulder and glared at Izaya with about as much strength as a sick puppy. But more than anything Izaya felt Shinra's eyes on him. He felt the barely-retrained trembling of his own fingers and the maelström that this unexpected meeting had made of his thoughts. More than anything, he wanted to go home and lick his wounds, despite the anger that rose in him at the idea; he wasn't _wounded_. He just needed a break.

"Kururi-chan should still be sleeping," Shinra said quietly. "I have something for her when she wakes up. It's nothing bad, what she has—just a stomach flu. She should be fine within forty-eight hours."

Izaya looked at him unseeingly for a moment, before everything seemed to deplete inside him. Kururi. She was sick, and Mairu was probably losing her head over it. This was why he was here in the first place.

It occurred to him that his sisters as actual human beings hadn't been on his mind since he had hung up on Heiwajima. They were only a concept, a pivot for his anger. It made Heiwajima's veiled accusations weigh on him and shame bubble up his spine until he could feel the threat of blood in his face and even the prickling of exhausted tears in his eyes. He turned his back on everyone in the room.

"I'll wait until she wakes up," he said in a painfully steady voice.

"Come to me before you go, I'll give you the medicine she'll need," Shinra answered.

Izaya nodded without turning back and made his way to the guest room, closing the door behind him. It was rude, probably, and it wouldn't make his escape from Shinra's inquisition any quicker in the end. But he took an easier breath inside the dark little bedroom than he had this entire day.

It took him a while to realize Kururi was staring at him from the bed. She had the covers drawn up to her nose and her hair was a mess of knots and sweat-slicked strands, sticking to her forehead or going up and to the sides. Mairu was asleep in the chair next to her. She had probably exhausted herself by worrying.

"How do you feel?" he asked her, walking until he was right by her side.

Kururi didn't answer. Her eyes went down to the side of the mattress, and she moved her arm out of the way under the cover. Izaya hesitated before sitting down where she obviously wanted him too.

"Hurts," she said then, but she was smiling as if he'd done something good to her.

"What did the doctor tell you?"

She frowned in thought, pupils blown wide by the dark, gaze a little unfocused. "Flu… something. Touka-sensei gave me a thing so I wouldn't puke. It's only for two days. I need to drink a lot. Fever."

Izaya nodded. She _looked_ feverish, with the kind of mild elevated temperature that never really spiked but rather stayed in place for hours, only enough to signal that something was wrong. She was pale everywhere but where her cheeks shone red, and there was cold sweat between her nose and lips and at her temples. It was the kind of fever he would have noticed if he had been here when they woke up that morning. It wasn't bad, though, it was nothing to worry about. She would be fine before Sunday when he would have to leave her again for work. He repeated those words inside his head until they started tasting like the truth.

"Iza-nii," Kururi said, and he heard more than he saw her hand creep toward his under the blanket. Izaya breathed out and stilled himself until he felt her palm under his through the rough scratch of fabric. He didn't close his fingers around hers.

"Sorry." He didn't know why he was apologizing.

Kururi looked at him, eyes wide enough to swallow him whole, and she said, "I miss mommy."

He tripped against the resistance at the back of his tongue, tiptoed around the febrile ache he had ignored for months. "I know," he exhaled, and brushed a hand against her damp hair as she sobbed, letting out the tears she had been accumulating all this time. "I know, Kururi. It's okay."

Her name felt foreign in his mouth. He had never hated himself more.

* * *

"Shit," Shizuo said for the third time.

It had been maybe fifteen minutes since Orihara Izaya and his sisters left, after an hour of conspicuous silence from the guest bedroom. Since then he had smoked two cigarettes, was on his way to light a third—even the soft squeeze of Celty's hand on his arm not enough to calm him down.

"I haven't seen you upset like that since high school," Shinra commented idly. Shizuo flipped him off, and Shinra only laughed as if the entire situation was hilarious. "Well, it figures that Orihara-kun would be the one to rile you up so much."

Celty tugged her hand away from Shizuo to ask, _How well do you know him?_

"Not very well," Shinra answered, finger stroking absently along the edge of his cup of coffee. "We never kept contact after middle school."

 _What happened?_

"Ah, I never knew exactly. I think he was involved in something that ended up with a kid being sent to juvie, but I was in high school with you two then, and we'd already drifted to different friend groups."

Shizuo exchanged a look with Celty, who hesitated for a second before signing again. _He doesn't sound like a very good person_.

Shinra hummed thoughtfully, took a sip of his coffee. Grimaced. "I wouldn't know. He was," a pause. "Different. He was very different back then."

"But you sounded like you expected this kind of shit from him," Shizuo objected, a frown pulling at his forehead.

"Different kinds of difference," Shinra replied evenly.

It didn't make sense, but Shizuo let this one confusing thing go in favor of the distress still rattling his bones. He couldn't wipe his mind of Izaya's voice as he threatened to report him for inappropriate behavior, or his eyes set so wide on him and filled with nothing but anger. It had been jarring, more than their first encounter. Like he'd cornered a wild animal without noticing it and only now was he getting scratched and bitten for his actions.

It wasn't a good feeling.

"Well, anyway, I guess I'm off to a great start," he muttered. "Shouldn't have gotten involved with Mairu and Kururi like this."

 _They seem to like you a lot, though_ , Celty offered. He smiled tightly in her direction.

He didn't know if it was true. All he knew was that he enjoyed talking to them, that he payed more attention to them in class than he did his other students. And as guilty as that fact made him feel, he couldn't help the affection he held for them, so close to what he felt for Kasuka. The kind of affection he had missed giving out since Kasuka had left home to do his own thing and come back an adult, hardly in need of his big brother. In a way, maybe he had been inserting himself into Izaya's role toward Mairu and Kururi without noticing. He could understand why that made the man feel so defensive.

The queasiness inside him didn't disappear, though. Instead of quieting, his thought circled back again and again to Kururi's quiet distress during the day, to Mairu's fear of leaving her sister alone even with a nurse. As if any time they weren't in each other's company was a time spent in loneliness no matter who else was with them.

His very soul seemed to rebel against leaving these girls, or their brother, alone.


	3. Chapter 3

You know the dril, I don't have a beta and English isn't my first language so my apologies for all the mistakes and typos I've missed while rereading.

Chapter warnings include transphobia and very light self-misgendering as well as graphic descriptions of blood and violence.

* * *

 **Some Required Effort**

 **Part III**

Izaya had been awake for an hour, long enough to break out of the disoriented haze of half-sleep and realize his alarm hadn't rung yet. It was the softer and easier pull of awareness against his still-unbalanced sleep schedule, not the shrill cut of his ringtone he had grown used to before changing his working hours. His neighbors had already started stepping loudly against the plastic floor. Through the open door to the bedroom he could hear one of the girls' soft snores. Light was pouring in from the window, peeking between the broken blinds that never completely shut it away. It wasn't an uncomfortable feeling. Despite the beat of blood against his eyelids and the restless weight over his temples, he felt more awake than he had ever been when he had to get out of bed alone, his apartment still shrouded in night.

He tore himself from his blanket and sat up on the couch, breathing in the stuffed air for a moment. It was warm already, enough that he had broken into the slightest sweat as he slept. Cooking breakfast was a matter of minutes. He opened the window when he was done, stretched, and rummaged through his clothes before entering the bathroom.

Mairu and Kururi were awake when he stepped out of the shower. Their voices filtered in from the open door, rough with sleep. They emerged from the bedroom wearing the same ratty pajamas as always—the ones that rode up at their ankles and waists, too short for them now.

Izaya only hesitated for a second before speaking. "Good morning."

They stopped dead in their tracks, Mairu's mouth opening slowly around her surprise. She was still soft with drowsiness. Kururi smiled.

Izaya walked up to her and put a hand against her forehead. He already knew that her fever had broken over the course of the weekend, that she had stopped vomiting in the night between Saturday and Sunday. She was fine now. But if anything her smile widened at the contact, and she stayed still as a statue until Izaya himself had to break away awkwardly.

"How do you feel?" he asked her for the thousandth time.

"Okay," she said. Her little hands were opening and closing at her side, as if she wanted desperately to grab him. He swallowed.

"Do you feel good enough for school?" She nodded vividly at that. "Alright. I made breakfast, come on."

"It's not cereal?" Mairu chirped, looking over the sweet omelette in her plate with a frown.

Izaya shook his head. "I thought I'd try to make something more substantial now that I have time in the mornings."

Both of them turned their heads toward him in unison. He ignored the pinpricks of self-consciousness at his nape, the memory of Shinra's judgmental words he hadn't quite managed to shake off over the course of the weekend.

"Are you really going to take us to school now?" Mairu asked. Her voice was somber. Her eyes, when Izaya risked a look at them, were disbelieving.

"Yeah," he answered. "Unless something unexpected comes up."

"And you're going to come and get us this afternoon too?"

He nodded, not breaking away from her eyes. She examined him for a moment, her little face scrunched up in suspicion, before she seemed to accept his words. Kururi, already sitting at the table and poking around her meal, was beaming.

Izaya ate his breakfast leaning against the counter. The table was small, good enough for an adult or two children but not all of them at once. He watched his sisters complain about the bland taste, about his cooking skills, but even so they ate. There wasn't a single spot left unclean in their plates once they were finished, and hardly any room on their faces left from how big their smiles were. He tried not to think too hard on how his throat seemed to loosen at the sight with the barest of relief.

He took it upon himself to wash the dishes alone, mostly because the kitchen was cramped enough without a pair of six-year-old girls stuck to his sides. His mind stayed firmly anchored to the box he had put on the bookshelf the night before and what he had to tell them before opening it.

"Go dress for school," Izaya said, ignoring the soapy water clinging to his arm as he gestured to the bedroom.

"It's too early," Mairu whined. "I wanna watch Yuuhei-san's morning show."

"I have something to talk to you guys about before we go. Hurry up now."

They obeyed reluctantly. He heard them shuffle through the closet, throw things on the unmade double bed where they slept. He sighed softly at the thought of going behind them again to put everything back in its place and refold the wayward socks they had probably left in their wake. But even that thought wasn't enough to dampen his mood. Izaya glanced at the bathroom as he made to pick up a fallen hair clip, and didn't repress his smile when he saw them brushing their teeth side by side and making faces at the mirror. There was a toothpaste stain on the collar of Kururi's shirt already, and Mairu's jacket was on backwards.

He was waiting for them on the couch, blanket folded neatly over the armrest, when they finally came out. They looked at him with a bored kind of curiosity. He thought they were more interested in his attitude change than they were in the blue box between his hands.

Well, nothing to do about that.

Izaya opened the box and took out the cellphone inside, a black flip-phone he had bought and configured the day before. Mairu and Kururi's eyes zeroed in on it as if he had pulled a gold bar out of his pocket instead.

"You know how to use this, right?" he asked them. He didn't know how to breach the topic otherwise. _Shirou and Kyouko let you use theirs, right?_

"Yes," Kururi said, surprisingly. She reached her hand out to pry the phone away from his fingers. She flipped it open instantly, Mairu leaning over her shoulder to look as the screen unlocked. The bluish glow reflected on her glasses.

"Only one number," Kururi muttered. "Iza-nii."

He was surprised at how fast she had been at finding the contact list. He didn't stop to wonder if such a quick take on electronics was normal for kids their age—he had always been good at guessing his way through technical trouble when he was a kid too.

"This is only for emergencies," he explained in a tight voice. They looked up. "You don't have any data or internet, I've only paid for an hour of calls or texts."

Mairu scowled. "Mikado-kun in our class already has his own cellphone."

"Well, I don't know how rich Mikado-kun's parents are that they can trust a six-year-old kid with pricey items like a cellphone," Izaya sighed. "But I'm not giving you your own phones until you can really use them. You can hardly read."

They looked at each other for a few seconds. Kururi nodded once, and Mairu's shoulders dropped in defeat.

"So, what's the point of this, then?" she fake-whispered at Kururi's ear.

"I can hear you," Izaya snapped. "And like I said, this is for emergencies. In case something happens and I'm not around, you can call me."

"Can we put Aoba's number in too? And Anri-chan's? And Kida-kun and Mikado-kun's numbers too?" Mairu's voice was excited, as expected. She kept shooting off the names of seemingly every kid in their class before Izaya had the time to wonder who any of them was.

Kururi was typing on the keys calmly next to her, her thumb making little noises against the plastic. "Can we put in Shizu-chan's number?" she asked softly.

Izaya felt something lock at the base of his spine, and his shoulder tensed in one painful spike under the straining grip of his binder.

"No," he said.

Mairu fell silent. Kururi stopped typing idly on whatever pre-installed game preview she had found and looked up.

Izaya let out a breath and made himself smile. "You can't put anyone's numbers in. I don't want you accidentally switching the priority call to one of your friends. And you can't ask your teacher for his number either, that's just common sense."

"But you have his number," Kururi pointed out.

His hand went to the pocket at his thigh and the bump of his own phone underneath. He flinched back before actually touching it, as though the dormant piece of plastic and metal was about to burn his fingers. "I do, because I'm an adult. Now stop asking questions, I have something else to tell you."

Mairu was frowning again, he noticed, her nose upturned in disgust. Kururi bumped her shoulder against hers softly.

"Here," Izaya said, handing them a piece of paper. There was a number written on it in big clear numerals. "I want you two to memorize this number. If you ever see it call you, you _don't answer_ , and you tell me as soon as you can."

Kururi took the paper, her fingers brushing against Izaya's briefly. "Who?"

 _It doesn't matter_ , he wanted to say, but he knew he had to give them some sort of an explanation in case they decided to investigate themselves. "My boss. His name is Shiki."

Kururi's eyes were so bright when she looked at him he worried for a second that she was getting sick again. "Why?" she asked.

"He's– not a good person. He shouldn't ever call you. It doesn't matter. But just in case, remember this number and never answer. I'll put the paper on the fridge so you don't forget. Okay?"

They both nodded, solemn. Izaya stood up and made his way to the kitchen without looking at them. He only relaxed when the soft clicking of Kururi's thumb on the keys resumed.

He hadn't wanted to risk registering Shiki's number into the phone itself. They could accidentally—or purposefully—call him and put their own lives at risk. But he needed a way to make sure they didn't allow Shiki to contact them.

The lack of change in Shiki's attitude toward him had Izaya standing on his toes the entire time when they met to work out his new hours and conditions. Shiki had looked professional and focused as always, no more dangerous than he usually was. Sloan's absence _should_ have lifted the weight of anxiety from his shoulders more effectively than anything else. But instead Shiki had calmly discussed his availability in the evenings and during weekends, had taken long inhales from his cigarette and cared to exhale away from Izaya's general direction. Had not mentioned the twins. Had not asked a single question. It had made Izaya's back slick with cold sweat and his fingertips ice over, as if the still and quiet of Shiki's demeanor was only the premises for an even bigger storm.

It had felt the same right before his parents died; an easy routine of days spent hunched over his classes or the ever-growing number of contacts in his phone, the slow allure of self-gained power and importance in a world that hadn't birthed him.

Izaya would never forget the free fall of his heart the second he heard the police say— _We're sorry we have to call you like this_.

Kururi let her hand sway by his too many times on the way to school for it to be accidental. He didn't take it, though. He would've felt worse about it if he couldn't see Mairu tightly gripping her from the other side and walking in time with her, like the entire trip was a game of steps and skips. It was still early when they arrived, still fresh enough from the night that he told Mairu to keep wearing her jacket—backwards as it was.

He didn't know what to tell them when they stepped away from him and into the playgrounds. They were looking at him like they expected something. A word of encouragement for the day, maybe. All Izaya could make himself do was pat Kururi's hair lightly and keep his expression neutral if not engaging. Mairu gazed up at him earnestly, but her body language looked defensive to him, so he didn't try to touch her. He felt the weight of her eyes as he walked away like a heat at his neck.

Sometimes looking at Mairu felt a little too much like looking into the mirror and seeing himself as a child.

Izaya didn't head the the Awakusu's gallery immediately. Shiki had sent him outside for the day to investigate Amphisbaena, and as logical as it sounded Izaya knew suspicion when he saw it. He lived his life with it hanging around his neck, after all.

His phone buzzed in his pocket. Nakura. He skimmed over the email, long for the paragraphs of vague apologies, excuses, and shaky taunts that the man always sent him. The message itself could have been said in two sentences, but Nakura had always been affable even as a kid, and hadn't changed much in the years since then.

Izaya smiled as he remembered the glint of Nakura's knife, so obviously stolen from his parents. The boy had been so _angry_. Sweat was running down his face like tears, his cheeks bobbled with his trembling threats of bodily harm, making the moles under his eyes jump up and down like tiny black insects. Yes, Izaya remembered Nakura perfectly. He remembered the cowardly boy who bet his money to feel like an adult, who ran around Izaya first with adoration in his eyes and then later with fear as Izaya goaded him to risk more and more. He never said no, though. It had been a game until the end, even when Nakura ran at him with a blade in his hands. It was still a game when Izaya showed a video of the stabbing attempt to his middle school's principal, still a game when Nakura was arrested and sent to juvie. No one believed ugly little Nakura when he said it was the Orihara girl's fault. The Orihara girl was a model student and an exemplary member of the literature club.

Izaya had more important things to think about after the incident than what could have become of little Nakura in juvie. Maybe that had been a mistake.

Because Nakura had _blossomed_ during his time inside. Not as a person, not at all; but he had somehow found a way to revive the underground activities Izaya had started in their middle school, had even reclaimed their names for himself. Izaya knew not a lot of children demonstrated the skills he had when he started Amphisbaena himself—but, unbelievably so, Nakura had apparently observed him enough to be able to establish himself a gambling trade leader both in juvie and then outside. He had sunk his claws into the parts of the city Izaya never bothered to look at, couldn't look at anymore with the work Shiki gave him, and made himself enough of a nuisance for Akabayashi Mizuki to hold an honest-to-God grudge against him. This wasn't a feat the scared little boy Izaya had known could have pulled off. And Izaya was dying to meet the man he had become and see if he could pull the worn-out fear out of him once more, freshen it up, see it take life again.

There was a stark contrast between what people said of Amphisbaena's Leader or Heaven's Slave's Lizard and the reality of Nakura as Izaya had known him. But ever since Izaya had contacted him directly, making absolutely no secret of who he was and how much he remembered, Nakura had been boring.

He whined. He pleaded. He threatened, then cowered. One day he would seem to grab onto the hook Izaya gave him with both hands, the next he was an impenetrable wall and spoke at length to say nothing. He was scared of Izaya, yes, too scared to meet him face-to-face. As susceptible as he had been to Izaya's veiled threats of blackmail he still refused to actually _see_ him to discuss them. And it wasn't out of defiance either; no, he didn't seem to be self-aware enough for that. He was just too _scared_ of Izaya personally to meet with him.

It was sort of amusing at first, because Izaya himself had been apprehensive at the thought of meeting Nakura—the same kind of self-consciousness he couldn't help feeling every time something from the past came up. He wasn't afraid of Nakura so much as he was steeling himself for his looks or his words. But no matter how interesting it was that Nakura at twenty-three years old was still scarred by the memory of fourteen-year-old Izaya, it didn't help his current situation.

Izaya needed money if he wanted to cut ties with Awakusu. And Nakura had all that money and more.

He read over Nakura's fumbling excuses once more before hitting the call button and lifting his phone to his ear. Bathed in the early sunlight, he smiled when he heard the high pitch of Nakura's voice over the receiver, ready to push just a little more beyond this man's limits.

* * *

It was ten to four in the afternoon and Shizuo's entire body was thrumming lightly with anticipation. Heat seeped through the classroom despite—or maybe because of—the open windows; June had come bearing the sweet scent of unfurled flowers and the heaviness of consecutive sunlit days. He could only thank the gods that there was no tree outside to bring pollen to the mix. Even so, some of the kids sneezed all day, and Masaomi had to make use of his inhaler at least thrice a week now.

"It's cool," he said every time. "Makes me sound like Darh Vader."

Shizuo could only frown and tell him to warn him in advance if he was having trouble breathing. He didn't enjoy spending ten minutes each time wondering which of his students was the source of the quiet wheezing that interrupted his lessons.

He toured the room again, stopping twice to look over Anri's shoulder at her neat handwriting as she practiced long lines of kanji. He only realized he had seen to her already when she threw a timid glance toward Mika sitting next to her, as if to tell him, _Please look somewhere else already_. Shizuo wanted to punch himself in the face.

Mairu and Kururi had already given up all pretense of studying about five minutes ago. They were engrossed in a game of short whispers and gestures that no one but them could understand, their eyes flying to the open door every few seconds, as if it would make their brother arrive faster.

He couldn't blame them. Most of the restlessness that came to him every day around three thirty was due to Izaya as well.

Izaya himself arrived like clockwork at four, and his sisters came to him so fast it seemed their feet didn't even touch the floor. It should make Shizuo happy. He should be satisfied with the easy rhythm the man had respected to the letter for two weeks now, with the newfound freedom of his early evenings. He shouldn't miss the walks between the school and the girls' rundown apartment building or the glimpses of their lonely apartment door already sheathed by the evening shadows.

Shizuo watched the siblings exchange a few terse words—the girls mostly, and Izaya only once to tell Mairu to fix her shirt which was hanging off her left shoulder miserably. His tone was as dry as he had ever heard it when addressed to his sisters. No trace of the anger he always directed at Shizuo, but no hint of a loving word either.

It was killing him.

He knew the three of them would be gone in a second, long before any other guardian came to pick up their charge, so he took a step forward and cleared his throat.

They all fell silent and looked at him. Shizuo found that he hadn't been quite prepared for the sight.

"I was wondering if we could talk," he said through his unease.

Izaya didn't reply at first. His shoulders came up, easing him off the comfortable slouch he always wore, like a cat raising his fur; his lips tugged into the barest of smiles, and that was all the warnings Shizuo needed to know that he was pissed.

He gestured to the girls to go back to their seats. They did so reluctantly, dragging their sandals on the linoleum so that they made little high noises most of their classmates flinched to. One day he would have to tell them about how rude that was.

Shizuo let the other kids go a lot quicker than usual, only exchanging the smallest pleasantries with their parents, until Aoba left at last with a wave to Mairu and Kururi and he was alone with three Oriharas once more. It didn't exactly bring the happiest memories to his mind.

Izaya had been leaning against the corner of Shizuo's desk while he waited, but as soon as the door closed he stood up and asked, "What is it?"

In a hurry, then, on top of a bad mood. Not that Shizuo hadn't expected it.

"There was something I was wondering about," Shizuo blurted out. No use beating around the bush. "I was reviewing the students' files, and you didn't say what your job is."

Izaya squinted at him disbelievingly. "Why were you reviewing the students' files?"

"I was just looking for something. I noticed Mairu's was lacking the info, and when I checked Kururi's it was too."

Shizuo didn't think Izaya would believe him. But he didn't think he would believe that Shizuo had been going through his files specifically so he could find an excuse to talk to him again either.

As expected, Izaya bristled at those words, his right hand flexing by his side. "Yagiri-san doesn't need that information, and neither do you," he drawled. "I told you to stay out of my life. I didn't think you would be so brainless as to _forget_ that warning entirely." Then, sweetly, "Don't push a pulling door, Heiwajima-san, you'll break your hands on it."

 _I could break any door with enough of a reason_ , Shizuo fumed silently. Izaya was smiling now, that annoying offense of a smile meant for insult rather than politeness. It fit too well on his sharp features, as if he was born with the ability to mock instead of laugh.

Shizuo wondered of Orihara Kyouko, whose face was so like her son's, had been this spiteful too.

"I'm not barging into your damn life," he growled. "This is just mandatory information for the school. I don't know how you managed to get away with all that shady stuff in the first place."

" _Really_." Izaya's voice dragged on the word. "Can't you picture a single way? You have a very poor imagination."

This was getting nowhere. Shizuo realized this, and so did Izaya, because he waved vaguely at his sisters, and they stood up with a rasp of their chairs.

"Wait," Shizuo barked, "I still need to know."

"I told you to stay out of my life," Izaya replied with more heat this time.

"No," and as he scrambled his memory for the wording of their previous argument, Shizuo realized he was right. "No, you told me to stay out of your family's business, which I did. I'm free to ask you for information for my _work_ , as an adult to another."

He berated himself almost immediately for his choice of words and made himself keep looking at Izaya, expecting his face to twist itself into resentment and hurt ego as it had before. Instead Izaya seemed to relax all at once, his face clearing of tension except for the bags under his eyes.

"Okay," he murmured to Shizuo's surprise. "I guess I can tell that much to a beginner." Shizuo opened his mouth to protest the obvious insult, but Izaya shot him an amused glance and said, "I work in investigation, sort of. I do research for a company."

It was so unlike what Shizuo had expected—not that he had any idea what he was expecting from Orihara Izaya in the first place—that it took him a few seconds to find his voice again. "What, like a reporter? Or a private detective?"

"Oh, _definitely_ nothing like a detective," Izaya answered with a shiver at his mouth that was the shape of a taunt.

Shizuo wanted to ask for more. He would have too, except Mairu and Kururi walked past him and to their brother, and Kururi grasped the fabric of Izaya's shirt insistently. Izaya looked down at her and turned on his heels without another word, obviously expecting his sisters to follow.

It was only Shizuo and his thoughts in the room now. He listened to their steps all the way down to the silent staircase until he couldn't hear them anymore.

There was something there making warning bells go off in his mind. The memory of Izaya talking about his boss with tension in his voice, and the way Head Teacher Yagiri never asked for more information than Izaya was willing to give. The secrets that Shizuo didn't believe came strictly from Izaya's need to be an asshole to every living thing around him.

There weren't a lot of people around willing to employ a man as young as Izaya. Not a lot of opportunities for someone of obvious modest means, least of all a twenty-something with two children as his charges. And even if there were, Shizuo could only think of one type of profession with superiors inhumane enough not to care that two kids had to walk home alone every day if it meant their guardian kept working.

Yakuza probably didn't see the need for regular working hours or legal job labels.

The thought haunted him the entire night and the day that followed. He went through the now comfortable routine of his lessons, happier in the warmth than he had been in April's cool wind. Answering his students' sometimes weird inquiries was a habit now, no longer a panic-inducing experience. But Izaya's words during the few times they had talked kept replaying in his mind, giving him more dark clues about what made the man than he thought he would ever care to know. He lost track of his words every time his eyes met Mairu's or Kururi's. The long hours in the classroom were a jumbled puzzle he didn't care to solve as long as his brain was stuck on Izaya's arrival in five hours, then three and a half, then one. The last minutes of the day dragged by at a snail's pace, every second tugging into infinity until the next came with a click of the classroom's green clock, breathless.

Izaya's arrival itself was anti-climatic at best. His face had washed of the previous day's tension. He didn't say a word when Shizuo signaled to his sisters to wait and not jump in his direction to leave immediately, he simply leaned against the desk once more as though he had any right to and watched the other children trickle out one by one, led by the hands of the adults who came to fetch them.

"Let's go outside," Shizuo said once they were alone. His words were addressed to the girls but Izaya flinched in the corner of his vision instead.

They went down the stairs and out to the playground with electricity sparking in the spaces between them all. Mairu and Kururi ran out to play, blissfully ignorant, and Izaya turned steel eyes to Shizuo, _I'm not afraid of you_ written clear as water on the sharp lines of his face.

"What is your job?" Shizuo asked lowly after a handful of seconds.

" _Why_ are you still bothering me with this?" Izaya hissed in reply. "Didn't you get enough of an answer yesterday? Or are you really so desperate for trouble?"

He was stage-whispering at best, projecting the need for discretion, but Shizuo was tired of tiptoeing around this man. He was tired of the awkward line he tried to step on when it came to the twins and their brother, so he put his foot inside Izaya's personal space and blurted out, "Are you working for the yakuza?"

He expected Izaya's face to give away a hint of offense or guilt. Any kind of feelings that may have proved or disproved his suspicions. But Izaya didn't twitch a single muscle, didn't lose the edge of the tense half-smile he was sporting, he only leaned in further.

"As I said," Izaya murmured slowly, his voice and his eyes nothing short of a brick wall, "do you _want_ to get in trouble?"

And Shizuo closed his mouth and thought about his words for a moment, really _thought_ about them. Back at his place with Shinra and Celty around him, he had taken Izaya's spiel to mean nothing more than a threat to contact Yagiri about his inappropriate behavior. It would have been in his right, because Shizuo has acted outside of his boundaries when it came to the twins; he had assumed too many things from too few details, had let the instinctive dislike Izaya as a person lit up in him dictate his actions. Now he wondered if the weight Izaya had given to his accusations were heavier than he had thought, if it came not from an arrogant young man but from an arrogant young man with ties to organized crime.

It was sobering. Because as far as he was concerned, Izaya's lack of a reaction in itself was an admission.

Shizuo exhaled slowly, then looked at Izaya again and said, "How old are you?"

Surprisingly, _this_ made Izaya flush with offense, his face growing pink under the thin perspiration that made his hair stick to his temples. "What does that have to do with _anything_?" His voice came louder, higher, all make-believe lost in his defensiveness; but then he seemed to choke on something, and he closed his mouth again before answering in a deeper tone, "Twenty-three. I'm twenty-three years old."

 _Two years younger than me_ , Shizuo thought. He knew his face was open on surprise at Izaya's outburst—he made the lines around his mouth soften on a more neutral expression. _Too young to be very dangerous even if he is with the yakuza_. Then, with guilt knotting his stomach, he amended: _Too young to really have a choice in this situation at all_.

The more he thought about it, the more he realized there was nothing he could do even if Izaya _was_ working odd jobs for criminals. If he contacted authorities about it the consequences would be too bad for himself, for Izaya, and mostly for the girls. Shizuo could lose his job, Izaya could lose his life, Mairu and Kururi could lose their guardian.

Mairu and Kururi weren't _unhappy_. Shizuo was dissatisfied with what he knew of their loneliness, suspected a share of emotional neglect whether Izaya was doing it on purpose or not; but they weren't miserable, and he had a hunch that they were happier now than they had been at the beginning of term, if only because they were moving further on the path of mourning.

He didn't dare hope that he had bettered their life at all by haranguing Izaya the way he had. But he couldn't deny that every day he watched Izaya leave silently with his sisters trailing after him he hoped to find any proof that none of them was as sad as they looked.

Izaya included.

"Okay," Shizuo said at last, once Izaya had stopped looking at him as if waiting for a lethal blow. "I have a deal for you."

Izaya exhaled on a tired laugh. "I'm listening," he mocked, crossing his arms over his chest.

"You don't like me asking questions about your life, or your sisters' lives outside of school. I get that. And honestly, I'm not exactly enjoying myself worrying about all that shit."

"Yes," Izaya said slowly, brows furrowing in confusion.

Shizuo nodded. "Alright. I won't ask anything more, then. But you have to take some time every week to stay behind when you come pick them up and let me tell you about their day at school."

"I feel like I'm repeating myself here," Izaya muttered, "but apparently you're slow enough to need it. _What_ does this have to do with anything?"

"Just soothing my own beginner's conscience," Shizuo said, and pulled his pack of cigarettes out of his jean pocket. He lit one without looking at Izaya, inhaled slowly, and worked his next words around the smoke. "S'what a lot of the other parents do anyway, it's kind of like an unwritten rule. You stay behind for a few minutes to talk to the teacher about how your kid is doing in class, twice a week or so."

"Boring," Izaya commented softly. His eyes were locked on Shizuo's lips when he put the cigarette to them again, but Shizuo couldn't tell if he was disgusted or not by the smell.

"Well, it may be boring, but it's what all the guardians do no matter how busy they are," Shizuo added.

Izaya blushed again, tearing his eyes away from him altogether. "Fine," he grunted. "Twice a week. You have a deal."

He walked away, sunlight catching red at his hair and turning it a softer brown in the day than the ink-black Shizuo was used to. From afar like this it was easier to tell that he and the two girls walking around him were related.

* * *

Surprisingly, Izaya kept his end of the deal to the letter.

He came every day at precisely four o'clock and left within the next minute on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. On Mondays and Thursdays, though, he waited with his hips pressed to the corner of Shizuo's desk at the front of the classroom until all the other kids and parents had come through. Then he waited for Shizuo to pick up his bag and lead the way downstairs and to the playground, where Mairu ran circles around Kururi, who tripped and caught her sometimes, and where Shizuo took a few minutes to draw the lines of the girls' activities and behavior in class for Izaya. Izaya listened, and smirked, and left with barely a word once he had enough, dragging the two excited girls out to the street. Shizuo always watched them until he couldn't anymore.

It came to the point where other parents and guardians became so used to Izaya's presence that he stopped gathering surprised looks. On one memorable occasion Mikado's very worried mother took Shizuo apart and questioned him in a low voice about the presence of his _friend_ , warning him agonizingly gently that although she didn't mind, others would not be so forgiving. Shizuo had to fight off the worst blush of his life once he caught on the undertones with which she called Izaya his friend, and explained to her that Izaya was only the older brother of two of his students and was waiting here only because he was acting as a buffer between Shizuo and the girls' parents and needed to talk to him longer than the other guardians did. Mrs Ryuugamine nodded, and took her son by the shoulder and left, and Shizuo stared at the door for a full minute wondering why his entire mouth tasted like lies.

There wasn't much to say about Mairu and Kururi themselves in class. Mairu was one of the livelier kids with Aoba and Masaomi, but not nearly as bad as any of them. She spoke up without permission sometimes, and when she got caught up talking to her sister her voice had a tendency to lose its whispering quality and become a nuisance to the others, but she quieted easily enough once called out. Kururi was always soft-spoken, her voice raspy as if she was perpetually waking up from a long night's sleep.

"Like Mairu is taking all the voice out of her," Izaya commented idly when Shizuo brought it up one day. "I know."

Shizuo smiled at his unexpected addendum, glad for the hint of caring behind the words, but Izaya only scowled harder in answer and buried himself in resentful silence until he left.

They were always outside when they could, the girls playing and Shizuo smoking while he talked. He had hesitated the first few times, trying to catch a hint of discomfort on Izaya's face at the proximity with the smell. But Izaya never said anything, only shot a quick look at his mouth when he lit one and then falling into the quiet.

The raining season came with a wave of heat that year. Although Shizuo preferred dry to damp, he welcomed the warmth with open arms at night and when he wasn't cramped inside a classroom. When it rained during Izaya's longer visits they stayed just inside the door leading to the playground, talking in low voices until either the rain let up or Izaya took out his umbrella and dragged Mairu and Kururi, thoroughly bored, out to the street.

Izaya didn't take well to the raining. His mood was somber, his hands nervous as he wiped sticky sweat away from his upper lip from time to time. Still, despite his obvious discomfort, he stayed every Monday and Thursday until Shizuo was done speaking, and eventually that took more and more time and more and more times a week.

He didn't exactly know when Izaya changed his pattern, or why. The handful of minutes Shizuo spent talking about Mairu and Kururi's grades stretched to a half hour when Izaya stopped absorbing the information passively and started actually giving back. It made Shizuo feel like he was doing the right thing; it felt good to have Izaya ask _why_ Kururi had failed a test instead of _if_ she had failed it. It felt good to see Izaya frown unhappily when Shizuo related a day the girls spent sitting next to each other in complete silence for no reason, worrying all their classmates and more. It felt like things were getting better when Izaya turned a worried glance to the girls instead of an anxious one.

"She's not always like that," Izaya said once after Shizuo told him about Mairu scaring another girl. "She's not– she doesn't have the best reactions to things. To people. She's not like that."

Shizuo breathed in. Out. "What is she like, then?" he asked cautiously.

And Izaya looked at him vaguely, with his lips upturned into a frown, and said, "She's nervous, that's all," looking like the words hurt when they came out of his mouth.

There was something there, Shizuo thought as Izaya closed up once more. Something that wasn't his to touch or try to figure out. Some sort of a pain that Mairu shared with her brother alone and that he wasn't allowed to pry into. He told himself this until he knew he wouldn't do the wrong thing and try to open another door he wasn't supposed to when he spoke next.

Somehow as June crawled by, heavy with wet, Izaya's pattern changed. Or maybe disappeared would be the right word. He missed one day, hurrying out with the girls with barely a glance thrown at Shizuo. He came in the next looking more tired, made up some lie about work that Shizuo wasn't inclined to believe, and suffered a tense few minutes of conversation with all the airs of an angry child. It wasn't very nice, overall. Still he came the next day, and stayed again, and the pattern repeated itself until it wasn't a pattern at all—until Izaya came and stayed to talk most days with no recognizable order as to when he bolted out without a single word.

 _Nervous_ was a good word to describe Izaya, Shizuo couldn't help but notice. Nervous in the ways his mood shifted under his skin like a living thing separate from himself, in the deceptive slouch of his shoulders and the pace of his steps—he walked with his hips, not his shoulders. Nervous in the lines of his mouth, so quick to stretch against ill-intentioned mirth. Nervous in his voice and nervous in his skin as if he was ready to jump out of it at a moment's notice.

One Friday their _talk_ stretched too far past the limit of an hour for it to still be considered afternoon. Shizuo was onto his fourth cigarette. Izaya was watching his sisters sitting down on a bench not too far from them, his face tense.

"They're close to Kuronuma Aoba," Shizuo said after a silent while. It was sunny today, too bright from the reflection of the sun on puddles all around them.

"Who's this?" Izaya asked distractedly. His eyes flew to Shizuo's, to the cigarette hanging from his fingers near his mouth.

"One of the boys. He's a little difficult, but he's nice to everyone. Came to school with his hair dyed blue for a bet on the first day of term."

Izaya chuckled at this, his shoulders dropping, and Shizuo felt the need to keep going despite the boundaries he was breaking by talking about other kids to one of the parents.

"Mairu talks to pretty much all the kids in the class, even if she's not close to any of them," he explained. "But Aoba is the only one Kururi ever directly talks to instead of just, you know. Hanging behind Mairu's back and staring in silence."

"You can say the word, Shizu-chan," Izaya replied pleasantly.

"Don't call me that. And yeah, it's creepy."

Izaya hummed, eyes still glancing around with no fixed focus. He looked tired, but not exhausted like he had been so many times before. More of a good kind of tired, one that required only sleep to fix itself.

Mairu walked to them quickly, irritated and bored. She flung herself at Izaya's arm lying limply by his side, hugging it against her and dragging him with her.

"I wanna go home," she whined. "Kuru-nee too. It's almost time for Yuuhei-san's show."

Shizuo wondered very faintly, as he watched Izaya's face relax into a smile and his entire body go slack at his sister's weak pulls, what it said about him that he was too distracted to react at the mention of Kasuka's scene name. What it said about him that Mikado's mother's well-intentioned words chose this moment to ring in his ears and rouse the rhythm of his heart until it beat painful blows against his ribcage, above the dormant suspicions in his guts. Izaya smiled down at Mairu, too tired to care or perhaps too content to, and Shizuo stood dumbstruck in the elongated shadows of the school playground as realization gripped him like a vice.

He was still holding the stub of his cigarette between two fingers when Celty arrived with a roar of Shooter's engines to pick him up. She lifted her hands to her head to take off her helmet as she walked toward him; then she must have seen how he looked and let go of it immediately to sign, _What's wrong?_

Shizuo shook his head. Laughed. "I'm attracted to Orihara Izaya," he said, and when he tried to speak more his voice died in his throat under the weight of ridicule settling over him—as if he should have realized the sort of trap he was setting for himself by caring too much, by caring for too long.

* * *

" _Can we meet tonight around six?_ "

Izaya halted for a second before his next step. Nakura's voice was firm on the phone, but even without this added clue Izaya would have believed the proposition to be real if only because Nakura had never been the one to offer a meeting before.

He bit his lip, running his tongue over the sting before finding his voice and saying, "Not tonight."

Only surprised silence answered him.

"I'll call you to arrange a meeting this weekend, Nakura-kun," he continued, smoothing his voice into neutrality. "I'm busy tonight. I'm glad you made up your mind to trust me."

A pause. " _Alright_ ," Nakura breathed, and Izaya hung up before he could say anything else.

He stayed still for a moment on the sidewalk, letting people walk past him until he started recognizing some of them as the parents and guardians of the kids in his sister's class.

He had waited a long time for this opportunity, he thought as he started walking again. He had praised and threatened and smooth-talked, used every tool in the box to get Nakura this far down the line. But his sisters' school was already in sight, and so was the spot their teacher preferred next to the entrance when he talked about his students until Izaya grew drowsy with the sound of his voice, a comfortable sort of soothing that he had not managed to find anywhere else yet. The thought of shortening his evening here made something ache inside of him—made him think, one too many times that day, of the long six weeks of summer break awaiting Shizuo starting Monday.

Shizuo's classroom was in shambles when he arrived. It wasn't the first time Izaya had seen the results of two dozen kids allowed within touching distance of art supplies, but today the mess seemed bigger than usual, less controlled. Maybe because of the holidays looming over them all. Kururi smiled as soon as she saw him enter the room, but Mairu was screaming excitedly at a boy sitting next to her.

Shizuo threw him a look as well. He was deep in conversation with another man, who had a hand on his daughter's shoulder and looked decidedly too chipper for his own good. Izaya fought back the urge to make his presence more tangible. He already knew that being sinister around Shizuo only tended to make them both angry.

He waited at the desk until Mairu finally walked to him, Kururi in tow.

"Good day?" he said.

They looked at him with wide eyes. It took him a while to realize that he had never really— _asked_ them directly. That he only ever relied on Shizuo's testimonies and his own appraisal of their mood to see if they were feeling okay.

The thought made his face feel hotter against the stuffy warmth of the room, slick at his temples and his hairline where sweat had progressively gathered during the day from the heavy, damp air.

He said nothing when Shizuo nodded in his direction and took the first steps outside the room, leaving it a mess to sort later. But his heart was beating at his throat, making it harder to breathe, even when they all reached the outskirts of the field outside the school building itself where games stood still wet with rain from the days before.

Shizuo lit a cigarette before they were even outside. He dropped all of his weight against a stone bench and exhaled slowly. Izaya stood next to him with every single nerve in his body alight, and waited for him to say the first words.

He didn't expect these to be, "So what are you planning to do with Mairu and Kururi during the break?"

He felt breathless for a second, unable to bring himself to look up at Shizuo's eyes proper, instead staring at the yellowish tobacco-stained spots of skin between his index and middle fingers.

Finally, he swallowed, and said, "Excuse me?"

Shizuo threw him a tired look. "You know, making sure they don't fall dead from boredom. Are you planning to do anything with them?"

Izaya only gaped for a few seconds. Then all the blood in his body took a trip to his head, flush with tension and the smallest amount of betrayal, and he closed his mouth, gritting his teeth.

"Izaya?" Shizuo frowned.

It wasn't the way he was supposed to say his name. It wasn't the way Izaya was supposed to feel when Shizuo said his name, not the way he had grown to expect from weeks of their little chats. He felt stupid, and embarrassed, and shaky from the weight of sheer emotion that overcame him during a time he had come to take as a small pocket of peace in his every day life.

"Do you think I would let them drop dead?" he asked slowly, beating his own voice into tranquil interrogation instead of the accusation he could feel building up his chest.

"I think you'd forget that they're six year-old girls," Shizuo laughed.

It hit Izaya like a punch in the guts.

"Forget," he repeated between clenched teeth.

Pain beat at his ears in time with his heart. It was sharp like broken glass, sharp like Shinra's eyes on him a few weeks ago—empowered by judgment and everything judgment always did to Izaya. He shouldn't care, he told himself weakly, that Shizuo still thought Izaya forgot about his sisters, didn't care, didn't _want_ to care. He didn't give any weight to Shizuo's darkened opinion of him when they first met, it didn't hurt then that Shizuo thought Izaya was the kind of man who could live a second of his life without thinking about what his parents' death had brought him in the shape of two little girls—he didn't care _then_ and he shouldn't care _now_. But he did.

And shame dug a hole in his stomach almost physically enough to make him keel over.

"I'll be leaving, then," Izaya said abruptly, voice too harsh even in his own ears.

Shizuo blinked at him. "What?"

But Izaya had turned his back on him and was walking toward Mairu and Kururi—at least until Shizuo's hand gripped his forearm with enough strength to make him stop in his tracks.

"Hang on," Shizuo said with irritation, "what's going on here?"

"I'm tired," Izaya answered without looking at him. His eyes stared a hole at a grey piece of gum on the asphalt. "I'm going home."

"We haven't talked about Mairu and Kururi's day yet, there are some things you–" But Izaya tore away from his grasp with a tug that left his entire arm tingling with the aftershock of pain, and Shizuo swore under his breath before taking another step toward him. " _Izaya_. What the fuck?"

It was unfair that Shizuo could so easily get Izaya's sisters' names out of his mouth, Izaya thought. As if they weighed nothing on his tongue and didn't make the back of his throat close on repressed grief. He slanted his eyes to the dumbfounded expression on Shizuo's face. It was unfair that he spoke their names with ease, with comfortable affection, and yet stuttered Izaya's as an afterthought, ripe with annoyance.

"Why are you so angry?" Shizuo said lowly. He should've been an actor, like his brother.

Izaya smiled. "I'm not angry."

Shizuo only looked at him, his hand falling down to rest by his side once more. "Izaya," he murmured, "you're the angriest person I know."

And Izaya clenched his teeth on his rage and stepped into Shizuo's space, his right hand reaching up to tangle itself into his yellow hair; he only had enough time to see Shizuo's face open on surprise and feel his eyes burn a trail to his lips before he was kissing him with enough strength to make him lean back on the soles of his feet, his hands finding purchase at Izaya's hips, hot through the fabric of Izaya's shirt.

Shizuo's mouth opened under his like a flower at sunrise. Izaya's entire body lit up at the first touch of his tongue, at the first taste of tobacco and heat, until all he could do was close his eyes and hope he wasn't consumed by his own anger so much as the instinctive way Shizuo fit himself against him, from lips to hands to legs until all he could feel was Shizuo's mouth burning against his and Shizuo's fingers pressing into his skin so hard he dared hope to find bruises there for the days to follow.

Izaya kissed Shizuo through the confusion he must have felt when his hands rode up to Izaya's waist and found the dip there; he kissed him until the force of his own want threatened to drown him. It sat at the back of his mind, luminous after months of denial, free to breathe and touch and need.

Shizuo's hand drove up to fit itself against Izaya's cheek and the damp hair above his ear; and Izaya started away from it as the silence around them made itself known, stark and sudden and _unusual_.

He turned his head to the side. Mairu and Kururi were staring at him with wide eyes.

For a long while Izaya stayed like this, his fingers gripping Shizuo's hair and Shizuo breathing softly against the side of his head. He let go all at once, exhaling through his nose and stepping away without looking back.

Every inch he moved forward was a fight against trembling of his limbs. "Let's go," he said curtly once he passed by the girls. At some point he assumed he heard the padding of their feet on the concrete behind him.

He felt cold all the way to their apartment, his fingers shaking against his key as he opened the door. He let the girls in before him and watched, petrified, as they took off their shoes and went to sit on the couch. He couldn't meet their eyes.

"Iza-nii," Mairu said in a timid voice.

Izaya jumped out of his stupor as if electrified. "I'm going out," he announced, his voice ringing too loudly in the living-room.

"Where?" Kururi asked, moving as if to stand back again and walk toward him.

"I have work." The words came out of him slowly. "I'll be back in time for dinner. Don't make mess, okay?"

He didn't wait for them to answer. The door closed behind him again with the same horrible metallic clang it always made. Izaya took out his phone as he walked down the stairs and speed-dialed Nakura before he even reached the ground.

" _Orihara?_ " came Nakura's voice, meek as usual.

"Let's meet tonight," Izaya said. "My schedule just cleared itself."

He barely listened to Nakura's fumbling explanations of when and where. He typed down the address from memory after hanging up and walked, ignoring the cabs and the underground station. He didn't think he could stand the proximity of others right this moment, didn't think he could ride a train with people pressed against him and not remember Shizuo's hands holding him, more grounding than anything he had ever felt. He hurried his pace, ignoring the way his surroundings turned into mist every time he turned his head around.

The rendezvous point was deserted when he arrived. It was an old garage at the limit of Ikebukuro itself, long abandoned by its previous owners and due to be reinvested as a barber's shop—or so the paper stuck to the door said. The door itself was unlocked so Izaya let himself in, and by the time his eyes adjusted to the dark he had realized that he was an hour early.

 _Good_ , he thought firmly, sitting down against a wooden box in a corner. He breathed in—it was colder here, with a hint of oil and metal in it, like the fingerprints of the garage's old life had been stuck inside, waiting to be felt again. Izaya ran a hand down his arm slowly, feeling little hairs rise on his skin. The temperature dropped further as he waited.

By the time Nakura made his entrance, heavy-stepped and slightly out of breath, Izaya had calmed down enough that the cold inside him was noticeable only to himself.

Nakura jumped a little when Izaya rose from his seat in the darkness. He hadn't changed much from his boyhood days. He had gained in height but his shirt caved around his stomach, betraying the same scrawny bust and limbs he had as a child. He was taller than Izaya now, and wider in the shoulders; but he looked more like a late teenager than a man for the way he slouched and the width of his eyes still striking on his face.

"Orihara," he simpered.

It was disappointing more than anything else. Even in the shadows Nakura didn't look anything like what he ought to, didn't look like a man who could make a fortune off of drug dealing and gambling.

Still, he was what he was, so Izaya put a smile on his face, stepped toward Nakura, and opened his arms wide and welcoming.

Nakura stabbed him.

The knife pierced him white-hot and all at once, too fast at first for Izaya to feel the pain of it. It stuck into him as if his flesh was butter, only painful when Izaya gasped silently and clawed at Nakura's wrist with shaking fingers. And then his throat tightened on a moan as searing pain shot through his belly, burning and mind-numbing until he couldn't see past the haze in his eyes to Nakura's shaky smile.

"Thank you," Nakura whispered, voice trill, "for being so fucking gullible."

He ripped the knife out cleanly, and blood poured over Izaya's shirt and hands as he pressed uselessly against the wound, not completely aware of when he fell to his knees or the rasping breaths coming out of his mouth. He didn't think he had ever seen this much of his own blood outside of his body. It was slick on his fingers, nauseatingly warm, noisy in the empty room as it dripped against dust and concrete.

"I had Yodogiri Jinnai look into you when you contacted me in April," Nakura said as he kneeled next to Izaya. "But I shouldn't have waisted the money. He said you're just a small-time informant working for Awakusu."

Izaya barely felt Nakura's hand rummaging through his pocket and grasping his phone. He let it fall on the ground as he stood up. The screen cracked under the impact, and Nakura stepped on it until the light died altogether.

"I've been waiting for this for a long time," he explained conversationally. Izaya looked up through the beating pain in his belly, swaying on his knees; Nakura was looking at him with a trembling smile. The moles on his cheeks went up and down like tiny black insects.

Izaya fell to his side with a low thud, still holding his wounds as if he could force the skin to stitch itself back together. His hands were drenched now, black almost to his elbows in the low light of the garage.

Nakura hesitated over him for a second, looking for the most appropriate parting words. "Freak," he settled on, his eyes roaming over Izaya's prone body one last time before he turned around and left, banging the door behind him.

Izaya grabbed his phone almost immediately. His fingers slipped on every key they tried until he couldn't see them anymore under the slime of his own blood. The phone stayed dead.

Mairu and Kururi wouldn't start worrying immediately, he thought. He coughed, and then choked because coughing only made the pain worse, only made blood rush out of him at a faster pace until his shirt and the front of his pants were wet against his skin, warm and sticky and disgusting. Mairu and Kururi wouldn't know who to call, when to call. They would spend the night clueless and only worry in the morning, and by then it would be too late. By then they would think to ask the neighbors, and the neighbors would think to call the police, and the police would look for him and find him lying here in a pool of his own blood with his broken phone clenched in his hand and no one around to to help him pass away.

No one around to pick up his sisters this time. No hidden fourth sibling or cousin or grandparent. He felt light-headed with the knowledge, typing uselessly against the same emergency numbers. Tears ran over his face but he was too breathless to sob. Panic coiled itself around his heart like a great snake, finally squeezing the life out of him like it had wanted to since that day at the funeral in the scorch of late summer.

His vision turned to white and his grip slackened on himself. He wondered if Shizuo would come to his funeral.


	4. Chapter 4

The penultimate chapter of this story! Thank you so much to everyone who reviewed.

My girlfriend Varsha illustrated Shizuo and Izaya kissing from Part III too! (Tumblr URL ectology, post/145932442645). As a reminder, you can find me on Twitter and Tumblr, my handle is izanyas on both sites.

Chapter warnings: mentions of bullying and self-harm.

* * *

 **Some Required Effort  
** **Part IV**

Shinra met Izaya for the first time in the literature club of his middle school.

He was already in his last year then, and had joined because his father wanted him to do something with his school life that wasn't just listening silently in class day after day without socializing. Shinra had thought it a little amusing at the time. Shingen didn't socialize with anyone except corpses at the hospital and the occasional coffee a young frightened intern brought him; yet he scolded his only son for being a shut in, for reading biology textbooks in his free time instead of joining the baseball team. It didn't occur to Shinra that this wish could have been born out of worry and love, because Shingen didn't worry and love.

Shinra remembered Izaya as he was then—with black hair half-hiding his face rather than framing it. With impeccably pressed uniform jackets and skirts and knee-high socks. Sharp smiles and sharp bones in his wrists ready to cut through his skin and maul, blue veins stark against forearms too thin.

Izaya never did anything to Shinra. But Shinra had no doubt that someone, somewhere, was being skinned alive by this angry slip of a boy.

"I'll call you Orihara-chan," Shinra said when they first met, weakly grasping the hand Izaya had extended, smiling lightly when he felt the first year's fingernails dig into his skin. "But you can call me Shinra."

Izaya smiled like he wanted to kill. His shoulders twitched, and the tips of his hair brushed against his jacket. Black on black on black.

Shinra was two whole years older than Izaya and they didn't talk much outside of club hours, which neither of them attended with extreme diligence. The literature club wasn't the best place to speak either, which was precisely the reason why Shinra had chosen it rather than the boisterous science groups whose members gave out colorful pamphlets and flyers at every start of term. Their club president was a serious girl with a bitter tongue who would rather everyone stay silent so she could read in peace. Everyone who actually wanted to talk about literature met outside of school, in coffee shops or ramen corners where they could chatter excitedly. Shinra never accepted their invitations. As far as he knew, neither did Izaya.

But Izaya always sat next to Shinra when the both of them were here. He would open the most obscure books and get lost for an hour into tiny prints faded over the years by greasy fingertips. He stayed silent and still until Shinra himself was too tense from his presence to pretend to read anymore and turned his head to look at him instead. And Izaya would smile and ignore him, or press a finger to the corner of the page he was at and open to Shinra, and they would talk.

Near the end of the first term Shinra understood that he was the reason Izaya came to the club at all.

He didn't think he had been purposefully singled out by his junior, not at first. Izaya's shakiness and brutal self-consciousness wasn't feigned, couldn't be feigned. But little by little there was less reading and more whispered conversations until the club president started staring at them in disgust every time they walked in and Shinra ceased to go altogether.

Were he more honest with himself at the time, Shinra would have done something to discourage the adoring tilt of Izaya's lips when he smiled at him. Or the way his body language opened whenever Shinra approached him, even just when he walked by him in a hallway; as if he was about to take a step to follow him. But Shinra at fifteen thought of it as a game, as something uncomfortable and flattering and entirely hilarious, and watched Izaya's anger spike and mellow out behind his angular face. Shinra was sort of an asshole.

So that was it. They weren't friends, they weren't much of anything. Shinra indulged Izaya's crush on him by weirding him out with the wildest conversation starters he could think of, the kinds that had made him a loner in the first place since elementary school. And Izaya listened with rapt attention and glinting brown eyes, answered the weird tests to human morals Shinra bestowed on him with so much enthusiasm that sometimes his cheeks colored and his movements lost their terrifying controlled stillness. That was it. That was all.

Shinra never contacted Izaya once he graduated. To his vague surprise, Izaya stayed just as silent. The only time his name came up—his old name—was when rumors started circulating in Raijin that some kid in the neighboring school had tried to kill him. But Shinra never mentioned that he had known the victim of this incident. Even when Celty and Shizuo brought it up with the tame curiosity of gossip, he only smiled and acted surprised.

It made sense that the child Shinra had known would grow up to be the man Shizuo brought into their home a decade later. Taller and less thin, with his hair cropped short so that no one could ignore the violence of his feelings anymore when they showed on his face. He was less wild but no softer. Still handsome. Still cracked at the edges so that light could pour in and lose itself in the darkness he hid.

Izaya was the same person in a different package, his anger grown to reach adult proportions and time behind him to learn to harness it.

Shizuo never stood a chance from the moment Izaya showed him a hint of vulnerability. Shizuo, Shinra thought, had always been drawn to the ones others forgot.

Shizuo's phone had rung about five minutes ago. It was well into the evening, more dark than light even by summer's standards. Shinra watched as Shizuo stared at his screen for a surprised few seconds, as he answered in a quiet voice and took a few steps away from Celty and himself in thoughtless need for privacy. The soft glow of the sunset drained away from his face in time with his blood, and by the time his murmured conversation stopped barely two minutes later his face was ashen.

Celty wavered on her feet, fidgeting with the cooling cup of tea in her hands. She made a hesitant move to put it back on the counter so she could sign her question. Shinra saved her the trouble.

"What's going on?" he asked.

Shizuo's hand flew to his pocket, resting for a shaky second on the outline of the pack of cigarettes he kept there before falling down again, restless.

"Someone tried to kill Izaya," he answered roughly.

Celty did jump at that. She immediately put her cup down and rushed to him with her hands forming flying questions, too fast for Shinra's average skills at sign language to understand. But it didn't matter, because Shizuo was looking at the floor and not at her, hands turning to fists at his sides in worry or fear, Shinra couldn't tell. So Shinra asked again, "What happened?" and made his voice more interested than it had been before, in the hope that it made Shizuo snap out of it before he hurt himself while processing the news.

Shizuo cleared his throat. "They said—whoever was on the phone. They said someone stabbed him. He's in the hospital now. His life isn't in danger anymore"—his voice cracked—"but he's still unconscious."

"That wasn't the police?"

This seemed to shake Shizuo for some reason. "No," he said harshly. Then, after a breath, "No. Probably not the police."

"Okay," Shinra said placatingly. He exchanged a look with Celty. "Well, he's fine now, and it's after visiting hours so there's nothing you can really do about it now. They probably won't let anyone but family visit at first anyway."

Shizuo nodded hesitantly; but then his face paled more. "Shit," he whispered, "the girls." He grabbed his phone again and pressed speed dial so hard Shinra thought he could hear the key crack under his thumb from his spot at the table. After a long minute Shizuo dropped his hand again, looking even less likely to relax in the near future. "No answer," he growled. Shinra hummed in vague agreement.

 _If they called you,_ Celty signed slow and easy enough for Shizuo to notice her and fix unseeing eyes in her direction, _then they probably took care of Mairu-chan and Kururi-chan too. They would have done that first_. She seemed to hesitate before asking her next question. Why _did they call you?_

"I don't know," he answered. His face was regaining color faster than it had lost it now—Shinra let himself find amusement at how red his ears were despite the situation.

"Go ask about Orihara-kun at the hospital tomorrow, see if you can visit him then" he advised. "Try to get some sleep now, it's late. You've been out of it all day," he added, voice turned to a tease.

Shizuo's hands twitched. He walked away without a word to them, and Shinra heard the door to his room close with perhaps more strength than strictly necessary.

 _What was that all about?_ Celty asked with a frown.

"Shizuo-kun's very, very soft heart."

She smacked him lightly on the arm. He grinned.

* * *

Nausea woke Izaya up, slow and relentless. It rolled like waves inside his stomach and up his throat, to his mouth where his clenched teeth refused access to so much as a moan—he was too scared he would vomit if he allowed himself to breathe. By the time he managed to blink through the crust shutting his eyes close he had identified it as pain.

 _Pain_ , dull and heavy all over his torso and sharp next to his bellybutton. His eyes burned dry under the soft evening light pouring from the window. He had enough sense to realize he was in a hospital room, and therefore not dead, but any relief he might have felt couldn't take form while his stomach burned. Only a voiceless grunt escaped when he gave up on silence. He shut his eyes, tears scorching his face, and could only open his mouth when a hand grabbed his jaw and fingers pushed pills past his lips. He was too tired to flinch at the roughness, too exhausted to worry, and drank from the glass of water he was offered. He coughed once after the hands retreated.

Every second was agony, every breath a fight against the stretch of what he knew were fresh stitches. He thought he felt blood seep through the thread closing the wound shut; for a vivid second the slick-warm feel of it was so real that he choked, vision going white on panic as if he was still lying down on the dirty floor of the garage, only able to hear anymore as Nakura slammed the door close with a bang.

Eventually the pain receded. The spikes of nausea abated until Izaya was able to clear his throat, and his belly stopped aching as much. It felt tender under the contact of his gown, just at the limit of uncomfortable and painful. But he could breathe, and when he opened his eyes, they were tearless.

The sunset had painted the walls gold. Next to his bed Shiki was sitting in a cheap armchair, eyes fixed on the screen of his cellphone.

"It's past visiting hours," Izaya rasped. His voice felt like blades coming out of his throat.

Shiki raised his head to look at him.

Very faintly, Izaya thought about how thankful he was that Shiki wasn't the kind of person to take advantage by looking. His eyes never strayed despite the open collar of Izaya's hospital gown and his noticeable lack of binding garment. He didn't know how he would have felt if anyone else from Awakusu had been appointed as his guard dog. He never learned to deal with it. Grogginess from the painkillers was preventing him from building fast and coherent deductions; but it didn't stop his body tensing on pain and apprehension, and it didn't stop his throat constricting on a sound as he remembered _why_ exactly Shiki was here.

"My sisters," he said.

"In our custody," Shiki replied curtly.

Izaya's heartbeat could dig a hole through his neck. Shiki turned for a second to snap his phone shut. When he looked back Izaya could hardly meet his eyes at all for the thick goo in his brain, dark and heavy on his brow as a physical weight, making his vision blur with dark fuzzy spots.

For a second they both stay silent, and then Shiki sighed and dragged a hand over the scars on his face.

"They're with Akabayashi," he added in a tired voice. "Nothing's going to happen to them. Can't guarantee the same for my subordinate." His lips twitched. "From what his most recent update told me they're rather _active_."

Izaya should say something. Should feel something. Some ease around the knots in his stomach and the painful drag around his wound, because he knew Akabayashi in name if not in person and was aware of the man's rigid ethics when it came to children. Shiki probably realized that he wasn't going to, because he spoke without prompting again in the same aged voice Izaya had never heard from him before.

"You still act like I'm going to suddenly turn around and shoot you through the head, Orihara, even after all my efforts to prove you wrong."

 _This_ struck through the mud of Izaya's panicked mind. "What?" he managed to get out.

Shiki rose from the off-white hospital chair and took a few steps to the side. "Imagine my surprise," he said, "when earlier this evening I received a call from two girls asking me if I kidnapped their brother."

Izaya opened and closed his mouth, unable to make sense of what Shiki was saying with fear still lining his back and shoulders. At least it didn't seem like his sisters were in danger. And if Shiki hadn't killed him yet he was hardly going to do it now—in a public hospital room with nurses still prowling the hallways. He may have bought his permission to stay in Izaya's room outside of the allotted hours, but he wouldn't harm him.

Shiki frowned at him. "There you go again," he growled, gesturing in Izaya's direction. Izaya watched him with wide eyes. "I really don't know what to do with you."

He seemed to fight with himself for a moment, aborting a step to the window and away from Izaya's bed and the slow beeping of his heart monitor. But then he briskly walked back to the armchair and sat down on it, despite how uncomfortable it looked, despite how close to Izaya that made him.

"Will you tell me what happened," he said. But the sentence was framed like a sigh instead of a question, as if he knew in advance what Izaya was still realizing—that he couldn't speak, that he couldn't trust, that this utterly unexpected change of balance in their interaction was closing him off even further.

For a minute there was just quiet, loaded with electricity.

"Your sisters called me," Shiki finally repeated, "because you were late for dinner and because they didn't have anyone else to call—even though apparently you warned them that I was the worst person on earth and that they should avoid contact with me at all cost." Izaya swallowed against the knot in his throat, and Shiki grunted. "Don't make that face. I don't blame you, at least for this."

He put a hand in his pocket, then took it out. "Can't smoke inside a hospital," he growled.

"That would be bad," Izaya replied in a small voice.

There was a brief silence. Shiki's staring was making Izaya want to crawl in a hole somewhere and bury himself away forever.

"We found you a few minutes after you got attacked by tracking your phone. Be thankful it was only broken on the outside, or you would be dead. The doctors who took care of you agreed to keep this story on the low and not warn the police, so no need to worry about uncomfortable questions." Blackmailing, probably, or by chance they were already in Awakusu Mikiya's pockets. Izaya didn't know and didn't want to know.

"So now what?" Izaya asked finally, more breath than voice.

Shiki glanced at Izaya's stomach hidden by the blue hospital sheet some nurse had doubtlessly provided and said, "Now, we need to have a talk."

"I don't see why."

"Don't play _games_ with me, informant." Shiki's voice was harsh now, like the crack of a whip in the silence of mid-evening. There was not even a hint of footsteps behind the closed door. Only the soft whirring of the heart monitor and the accelerated beeping making Izaya's own fear so stark to the ear no matter what he did to hide it.

"Okay," Izaya whispered.

Shiki's face relaxed somewhat. "Good."

Izaya waited while Shiki looked for a way to start. He ran his dry tongue over his teeth twice nervously, longing for more water but not daring to ask for it. His throat was parched. He felt hot and shaky. Like his arms were to weak for him to do anything with them and his legs were chained in place instead of just resting on the thin mattress of his bed.

"There is one thing I want to make clear," Shiki said, unexpectedly hesitant. "You operate under the belief that I hold some sort of all-consuming dislike for you. I _don't_."

Izaya breathed in.

"Personal feelings aside, I only care about what is good for Awakusu-kai and what isn't," Shiki continued. "You are an asset. I wouldn't have offered a job to a college student if I thought more seasoned brokers were out there who could do it better.

"When you came to me months after I made my offer, I didn't take you in out of _pity_." His voice slipped on the word as if it were an offensive concept to him; and then, ruthlessly, "I didn't care about your circumstances. You obviously didn't want me to care either, which was just fine. I only ever saw this as an opportunity to have a skilled informant work exclusively for Awakusu."

His eyes met Izaya's, and then deliberately stopped on the board at the head of the hospital bed where all information about Izaya's current physical condition was written for doctors and nurses to see.

"I understand why it's difficult for you to trust anyone," Shiki said gruffly.

"Don't," Izaya cut in.

Shiki stared at him, unreadable. "I was never trying to patronize you. You're a loner and I can respect that. You don't trust me as far as you can throw me, and I respect that too—it shows you're cautious and that isn't a bad quality to have in our milieu. But you need to learn to compromise."

"On what," Izaya seethed, trembling, "on my safety? On my _sisters'_ safety?"

"On _trust_."

Izaya closed his mouth on a strangled noise. Shiki rubbed at the scar above his temple with the tips of his fingers, eyes half-closed as if he was in physical pain over the entire ordeal.

"I have been waiting," Shiki said slowly, "for you to start acting like the adult I know you are. You were arrogant when I met you, but you never hesitated. You were impressive and I wanted you working for me and the organization I belong to. But for the past few months you've been nothing but defiant and treacherous, even after I showed you countless times that I am willing to work _with_ you. I treated you like a man-"

"No need to congratulate yourself," Izaya barked, stung as he had not been for a very long time.

He regretted it immediately. But Shiki nodded solemnly and said, "I apologize," and Izaya suddenly couldn't meet his eyes anymore for the sheer unexpectedness of having anyone offer immediate apologies over this.

Shiki sighed. "My point is, you've acted like a child. I tried to show you that I value your work enough to make accommodations, the way I do for any of my men. But you took this the wrong way _somehow_ , and now here I am, wasting my free time lecturing you on work ethics and having some faith in me."

Izaya wanted to say a lot of things. He wanted to let the breadth of his hurt ego shine through his voice and yell, _Stop treating me like a child_ , except what would that prove besides the truth of Shiki's words? He _had_ been acting like a child. He had let fear and his need to rebel against his circumstances blind him and had put himself at risk—had put his sisters at risk. So he exhaled slowly until his heartbeat slowed; until the relief that coursed through him faded away from the high of immediate safety and to the low burn of knowing that at least, at _least_ , Mairu and Kururi hadn't been the ones stabbed for his mistakes.

"I'm sorry," he said at last. It stung going out and his cheeks flooded with blood, but he made himself look at his boss until the man nodded in acceptance.

"I don't need or want you to trust me on a personal level, but you need to take your head out of wherever you buried it and allow yourself to rely on me professionally," Shiki said. He got up from his seat once more to walk to the window. It squeaked as it opened. Air rushed in from the dim and too-warm street, but it felt fresher still than the caress of the hospital's AC. Izaya said nothing when Shiki lit a cigarette despite the ban. He refused to let his mind linger on the smell of tobacco and the recent unresolved memories it brought back.

"I don't discriminate with my employees," Shiki spoke after a while, looking down on the road where cars rushed by despite the late hour, roaring distantly. "And yesterday one of my employees almost got killed. I need to know why and I need to get my hands on the people who attacked him."

He looked back at Izaya and crushed the lit end of his cigarette against the windowsill. It glowed red and then choked out with a small burst of grey smoke. "Now," he said, "will you tell me what happened?"

So Izaya did.

In the short time it took him to admit his plan to Shiki and scramble his mind for Nakura's words over the months—what they could mean in the grand scheme of Awakusu's relationship with Amphisbaena—night had finished falling. Shiki only asked cursory questions and never remarked on Izaya's brutal shame and embarrassment and the anger they fueled in his voice and manners. He smoked one more cigarette as he listened, his face outlined by the harsh yellow glow of a street lamp more than the soft white light of Izaya's bedside.

"Your sisters will be here in the morning," Shiki said as he slipped the butt of his last cigarette inside a small plastic ashtray in his pocket. "I'll be leaving now to work." He paused. "Is there something else I can do for your ungrateful self?"

Izaya closed his eyes. "Fire Sloan."

Shiki's laugh was a curt and harsh grunt, something entirely expected if not for the fact that Izaya would have never thought he'd hear it. "I'll see what I can do."

* * *

As promised, Izaya's sisters entered his hospital room at ten in the morning right when visiting hours started. Mairu was sitting on Akabayashi Mizuki's back with her thin arms crossed before his neck and no doubt pressing into his trachea uncomfortably. Kururi was dangling from his left elbow, her feet hovering just above ground level.

Izaya pushed away the remnants of his stale tea. "Thank you for bringing them," he said cautiously.

"No problem," Akabayashi smiled as he unknotted Mairu's arms. She slid down his back with a happy giggle. Kururi was already sitting in the armchair next to Izaya's bed and looking at him intently. There wasn't a trace of worry in her eyes, but she was very still.

"We fixed the issue you brought up," Akabayashi declared after a brief moment spent looking over the tight immobility of Izaya's hands in his lap and the way Mairu stepped around the heart monitor. "Shiki-no-danna is just dealing with some background problems now."

The question of what happened to Nakura was on Izaya's tongue, almost pushing past his lips. He wanted to know and didn't at the same time. The instinctive need for revenge pressed against the realizations he had come to the night before, still too fresh and easy to crumble. But his sisters were here now, Kururi never blinking away from him and Mairu hovering around the foot of his bed as if she was too scared to come closer, so he nodded and said, "Thank you. Can I have a moment with- with my sisters, please?"

"Of course," Akabayashi replied. His cane hit the ground evenly as he walked out.

The silence that followed was crushing. Sunlight brightened the room an almost blinding white, and the open window allowed in the chatter of busy streets outside; but nothing could distract izaya from the weight of Mairu's timid glances or Kururi's implacable staring. He didn't know what to tell them. He didn't know how to apologize any more than he knew how to show he cared, and every second that sped by was another notch up the rhythm of his heartbeat, until his chest felt more painful than the sting of mending skin and muscle in his belly.

"I apologize," he started, "I didn't mean to scare you both. You were right to call Shiki, even though I told you not to."

"Akabayashi-san said someone tried to hurt you," Mairu muttered. She was kicking the leg of Izaya's bed, and her shoe made high pitched noises every time it rubbed against the floor.

"Yeah. But it's okay, they're gone now. They won't hurt me anymore." _They won't hurt you either_.

She looked up at him through her bangs. "Really?"

"Really," he repeated. "And the doctors took care of me, so I'll be all healed in no time. You'll have to stay with someone else for a little while, but I'll be home in a few days." This seemed to lift something from Mairu's shoulders. Her slouch relaxed until she was standing straight, open and smiling.

"When can we hug you?" Kururi asked suddenly.

Izaya's heart came to a stop. "What?"

"The nurse lady," she continued in the same unflinching tone, "she said we can't hug you because it's painful."

"Kuru-nee wanted to hug you because you let Shizu-chan hug you," Mairu explained from her end of the bed, and Izaya felt his entire face grow hot.

"We weren't-" he spluttered. He breathed in through his nose and heard a small, mortifying sound come out of his mouth. "I didn't let him _hug_ me. And I'm fine. The doctors gave me painkillers."

He realized what he had just said the moment Kururi did. Her face lit up as she hopped out of the chair and to her feet, crossing the distance between them in barely a second. Izaya swallowed back his protests when she grabbed on to the handle by his bedside to hoist herself up on the mattress. She never hesitated a second. Her hands locked themselves behind Izaya's shoulders, slithering in between his shirt and the pillow supporting his back. He flinched when she rested her chin at the base of his neck.

She was so small. Her entire weight rested on him now, except for her legs hanging unsupported where the mattress ended. When Izaya breathed her hair flew in front of his mouth, tickling his nose. She felt heavier than anything he had ever held. He brought a hand up without knowing what to do with it.

It must have been the worst hug Kururi had ever received, absolutely nothing like what Shirou and Kyouko had given her so freely. Izaya was stiff and unresponsive as a board. He didn't know if he should put his hand against her hair or the small of her back, if he was supposed to talk or stay silent. He could only wait it out and stop himself from squirming away. He almost jumped out of his skin when a new weight added itself to his legs—Mairu was lying over them with her face raised in his direction, her arms surrounding him and her hands trying to reach each other through layers of blanket. She didn't manage it, but she grinned at him as she was, lying flat on her stomach with fingers wiggling under Izaya's knees, and Izaya _ached_ now, chest bursting open and throat closing off against what felt like sobs, eyes burning through tears until his sight was too blurry to even make out the edge of Kururi's head shoved under his chin.

"Please don't go away too," Kururi said against his skin.

He pressed his wet cheek to her hair and breathed in. There was antiseptic from the room, and leather and smoke from Akabayashi's car; and beneath it all the tang of fake strawberry from the shampoo he always bought them, sweet like nothing he had smelled before.

* * *

The flower shop in front of Raira General Hospital opened at two in the afternoon. Shizuo was there by one, leaning heavily against the grey wall surrounding the entrance. There was always a nurse or cleaning staff member there with him as he waited, smoking or drinking coffee or both. Sometimes one of them would sit down against the dry pavement and eat lunch like this. Passersby sidestepped them habitually, without so much as a disproving glance.

When the shop opened, Shizuo crushed the end of his cigarette beneath the sole of his shoe and walked up to the lady who was arranging flowers outside. He didn't know what to get Izaya. He had never visited someone at the hospital—Kasuka had never needed it, and as far as he knew neither had his parents. Shinra worked here, but there was a difference between hanging out with Shinra during his time as an intern and visiting someone he knew who was almost killed.

Shizuo stared at the flowers outside the door to the shop itself for a long while. In the end the shopkeeper approached him with a sweet smile and asked what he needed them for.

"I'm visiting someone at the hospital," Shizuo grunted, fidgeting.

"Friend? Lover?" she asked, and then laughed when Shizuo blushed without answering.

He walked out with a bouquet of white carnations in his hands, stems still freckled with water. They were pretty, he thought. Plain and unnoticeable. But the flowers were thick, with too many petals for him to count, shaped like cups and wide as his palms.

He took the stairs after asking for Izaya's room number at the reception. There was a line for the elevators. A dozen people or so fretting around the steel grey doors with sad faces and open empty hands. The sight made him reel. Izaya was staying on the second floor anyway, a few flights of stairs away in blissful loneliness.

He was at the end of the hallway, right at the edge of the ward where patients' rooms ended and a waiting room sat packed with plastic chairs before the doctor's office. A nurse was coming out with a clipboard in hand, and she smiled at him as she pushed her trolley away to the next door. He took a breath and walked in.

It was a bright place. Shizuo had never seen the inside of a hospital room before, but he thought it wasn't as bad as the horror stories Shinra sometimes relayed to him. At least Izaya was alone, only one bed and not enough room left for a neighbor. He was sitting up, too, not lying down or unconscious as he had feared, with an old laptop on his knees and a bored look on his face. Shizuo cleared his throat.

Izaya looked up almost immediately, mouth set to stone even as his eyes widened.

"Hey," Shizuo tried half-heartedly. He hesitated before stepping forward to put the flowers on Izaya's nightstand. Izaya gave a quick look to the carnations but didn't say anything.

An uncomfortable knot folded itself over Shizuo's ribs, restrictive and almost painful. He looked around again as he searched for the right words to start a conversation. How _did_ you start a conversation with a man you liked who kissed you before running away and almost getting himself killed? He'd bet there was no helpful advice on any dating forum thread for this.

The thought made his heart flutter and blood rush to his cheeks, but before he had time to decide on a course of action, Izaya opened his mouth and said, "These are going to need water."

For a second Shizuo was confused as to what he was talking about.

Izaya tapped a finger against the stem of a carnation. "The flowers," he added with a sharp smile. "If you don't put them in water, they'll die."

"Right," Shizuo said. He hovered in place, unsure if he was supposed to say anything else. In the end he picked up the flowers, noticing the empty blue vase set on the nightstand for the purpose of holding them. He walked to the bathroom to fill it.

When he came back Izaya hadn't closed his laptop or put it away. He was staring at the screen as though no one else was in the room with him, but his eyes weren't moving and his hands clenched by the keyboard, white-knuckled.

"Where are Mairu and Kururi?" Shizuo asked after putting the vase and the flowers down again. For some reason, his question made Izaya frown.

"With a friend. No need to worry yourself about it."

"No need to- you got _stabbed_ ," Shizuo pointed out.

"Yes," Izaya mocked. "I hadn't noticed."

He looked so unperturbed. Laptop open on his legs and wearing his own clothes instead of one of those awful blue gowns that opened at the back, as if he could just walk out any time he wanted, as if Shizuo hadn't been looking all over him since he entered for a hint of gauze or blood.

"How do you feel, then?" he tried again, swallowing back his growing irritation.

"Just peachy," Izaya muttered. He wasn't looking at him anymore now. His fingers flew over the keys of the laptop, and the screen came to life, white against his skin and the dark circles rimming his eyes.

Izaya was angry again, Shizuo knew. His body looked tense as a wall, as if he was blocking something from the inside rather than trying to prevent something else from going in; it was how he looked when they first met, how he looked before they kissed. Before he let the walls crumble and his face lighten with feeling—and then Shizuo had to stop thinking unless he remembered how Izaya felt against him or just how much he wanted him.

"Did you choose the flowers yourself?" Izaya asked suddenly. He still looked displeased and twitchy. More than usual. His eyes read over something on his screen.

"Why does it matter?" Shizuo said.

"Well, white carnations mean good luck and healing," Izaya explained. He was watching Shizuo now.

Shizuo didn't think much of it. "Isn't that a good thing to bring to someone in the hospital?"

"They also mean innocent love," Izaya added mildly.

Time stood still for a second; then Izaya closed his laptop slowly and pushed it to the side, his dark eyes still studying Shizuo's as if he was a thing to be dissected, opened up and turned in on itself. Ice ran up Shizuo's back, tiny pricks like the beginning of shivers so out of place even with the dry cool air conditioning. He clenched his teeth.

"I think you're mistaken about something, Shizu-chan," Izaya said very slowly. "I think you're pushing way past your boundaries once more. I should have expected this. You've elevated inappropriateness to an art form."

Shizuo swallowed. "You're the one who…" He flushed, and gritted his teeth. "You can't just call me inappropriate here, you asshole."

"Because I kissed you?" Izaya laughed. He pressed an arm around his middle as he did, fingers spasming in pain, but his voice rang in the room and out the door where anyone could hear it, take a look inside and see Shizuo standing there with a red face, heart bruising against his ribs.

"This is pathetic," Izaya declared once he was finished.

Shizuo breathed out and stepped toward him.

"Maybe it is," he said lowly. Izaya had leaned back against his pillow, eyes half closed. But he was still tense, still angry. Still lying.

"Maybe it is," Shizuo repeated louder, "but at least I'm not lying to myself about it. I didn't pick the flowers, maybe the florist lady got it wrong. I just wanted to come see how you were doing. The flowers are just a gift."

"That kiss didn't _mean_ anything," Izaya replied with more heat. "I kissed you because you were there and I was tired. I was feeling vulnerable. I would've kissed anyone else. Wake up, Shizuo."

"Never mind this _blatant bullshit_ ," Shizuo snapped back immediately, "considering how fucking strung up you are every time someone non-threatening so much as lays a finger on you," and here Izaya flinched, and red bled into his face, hot and furious, "It did mean something. It meant something to me, because I _like_ you, God knows why," he added. He pressed forward before he choked, his hand shooting out to brush Izaya's, "I like you. I liked kissing you. All I could think about after you left was calling you and asking to see you again, kissing you again, maybe ask you out on a date. Jesus, Izaya, I've liked you for months now."

His fingers slid over Izaya's, pressed into his slack palm. He didn't hold it exactly. He wasn't sure he was allowed to. But he wanted to, so terribly, and he thought Izaya might take him more seriously if he showed him something more tangible than words, no matter how much these words rattled Shizuo's being as they came out, unfiltered and awkward.

"Don't make me laugh," Izaya muttered. His fingers jumped beneath Shizuo's.

"I tried to call yesterday and see if I could visit sooner," Shizuo said. He left out the part where he couldn't sleep or do anything but wait for time to pass, thinking about each of the Orihara siblings in turn until he was ready to pass out from emotional exhaustion.

Izaya shook his head. "You don't like me."

"Don't tell me how I feel," Shizuo growled. He slipped his hand out of Izaya's, and Izaya moved his to lay across his lap, too far for Shizuo to grab unless he wanted to lean all over him.

"You don't," Izaya repeated hotly. "You barely know me. Have you forgotten already? I threatened your job. I'm a terrible man who would let his sisters die and not even notice," he added with a parody of a smile, a rip in his face that made him look closer to tears than joy.

 _When did I say this?_ Shizuo thought then. The words tugged at his memory, as unlikely as they sounded. Like an echo of something gone wrong in the shadow of the trees the school gates opened to, right in the spot where Izaya and himself had talked so many times.

"Is this why you were so angry?" Shizuo asked.

Izaya frowned at him. "What are you talking about?"

"Two days ago, at the school. You were so angry, and I didn't know why," Shizuo explained, his own anger suddenly forgotten for the task of trying to understand what had prompted Izaya's. "Is it because I joked about Mairu and Kururi dying of boredom?" He shouldn't have done that. He should've known better than to express doubts at Izaya's ability to care for his sisters, especially in that way, especially when he knew now that Izaya did care.

And he _did_. There had been no lie in the way he smiled at them, in the way he defended them even when they were at fault. Shizuo had seen the truth of it so many times over the weeks, when Izaya asked instead of listening or when he stayed despite his discomfort in the heat, in the rain, with exhaustion heavy on his brow and the arch of his neck. One eye stuck to the playground where his sisters ran and chatted, always.

So Shizuo said, "I'm sorry I said this," and put a hand on Izaya's shoulders this time, and Izaya stared at him as if he'd never seen him before, open-mouthed.

"What are you," he started. Then he breathed and said, "I wasn't- look, Heiwajima. _Shizuo_. I was tired, that's all that happened. It didn't mean anything to me. You don't have any romantic feelings toward me, no matter how _pretty_ you think I am. Please snap out of this before I snap your neck."

"I do, though." Shizuo smiled, and Izaya blushed.

"You find me annoying," he pointed out.

"Yeah."

"You think I'm a delinquent hanging around dangerous men."

"No shit."

"You were right about that, by the way," Izaya insisted. "I do work for yakuza. I'm an informant, and I sometimes use very illegal means to get what I want."

"I'm not very happy about that," Shizuo replied with a frown. "But they saved you, right? Your boss. I noticed that it wasn't the police calling me, and there's no security around you. I'm surprised I was called at all."

Izaya flushed even further. "My sisters told them to call you."

"Oh. Okay, then." He didn't like to think about Mairu and Kururi being in contact with criminals. But Izaya didn't seem worried about it, and Shizuo himself was used to illegal things around him from living around Celty's and Shinra's sometimes odd jobs. "I still like you."

Izaya bit his lip, and he looked scared now instead of angry. His hands were fists around the blanket, breath coming out of his nose with the faintest of rushing sounds. Shizuo let go of his shoulder and added, "I'm not saying you should like me back, or agree to date me, or anything. Not right now." A pause. "Not _ever_. But please stop saying you know better than me how I feel about you. It's annoying."

"There are things…" Izaya stopped. He gnawed on the inside of his cheek for a moment, in perhaps the most endearing twitch Shizuo had seen him display yet. "You don't know me," Izaya settled on. "Not really. There are things you don't know about me, things you might not like so much once you find out."

"What could be worse than working for yakuza?" Shizuo said it as a joke, as an attempt to erase the tense crease of Izaya's brow. But Izaya smiled at him, fatigue etched on his face, and said, "You'd be surprised what things people consider truly unlovable."

Izaya seemed truly tired now. With the sun and the white glow of his laptop his face was pale, almost translucent. Like anyone could shine a bright light on him and see through his skin to the muscles and bones inside. He looked pained, too, arm still wrapped around himself for comfort or security. His painkillers must be running off. So Shizuo didn't ask more despite his worry and curiosity.

"You know," he said after a while. Izaya looked up at him once more. "I get that you're a very guarded person. I don't know why, but I get it." He hesitated. Izaya looked more open now, more relaxed. At least he wasn't caught in the same terrifying stillness he always was when something was making him highly uncomfortable anymore. "Not a lot of people like me. Actually, a lot of people have disliked me my entire life. Maybe 'scared' would be the right word here."

He took a seat in the chair next to the bed. Izaya didn't question him, but it didn't seem like he minded listening either. Shizuo clasped his hands together and cracked his neck to get rid of some tension—he chuckled when Izaya made a face at the sound.

"I never told you why I became a teacher, right?" he asked.

"No," Izaya answered. "I don't think it ever came up."

"Yeah, well. I usually never have to explain it because everyone around me knows why already." It wasn't that he minded talking about it, exactly, even with the unsavory memories it brought up. Every painful echo was soothed by a happy one, after all. But he liked Izaya, and now Izaya knew it, and Shizuo realized that just as he did not know Izaya, Izaya didn't know him. He wanted to share.

"I used to get in a lot of trouble as a kid," he explained. "Lots of fights. Nothing too bad, but I was a difficult child, bad grades and bad temper, and it made my parents miserable for all my elementary and middle school years. They were always supportive, they defended me when they needed to and scolded me when I was in the wrong. I guess I was just lonely. The bad rep was nice at first, but it's a lot more difficult to handle once everyone at school knows you as this hopeless boy with no future who is likely to punch you in the face if you say the wrong thing."

Izaya hummed. Approving, maybe, or understanding. It didn't sound bad at least.

"Anyway. Once I reached high school everyone had sort of given up on me. I spent the first term staying away from fights because I realized it didn't bring me anything anymore, not even attention, since now everyone was just avoiding me. But I was bad at school work, and my teachers didn't care, so I was just falling more and more behind everyone else."

He paused for a moment, gathering his memories. There had been bullying involved, small things like thumbtacks in his shoes at the end of the week or mocking writings on his desk when he arrived some days. No one attacked him directly, although a few groups would sometimes whisper loudly as he walked by to see if he could be pushed into rage and violence. Shizuo never indulged, because by then his accesses of violence had already turned to himself instead.

"You know Shinra, right? I mean, you knew him before you met him at my place." Izaya's mouth turned to a frown, but he nodded without interrupting. Shizuo continued. "Well, Shinra and Celty—that's the other person I'm living with—they started talking to me after a while. I think it was Celty who was worried about me, and Shinra just tagged along."

"That doesn't surprise me at all," Izaya said tersely.

Shizuo let out a rough laugh. "Yeah. He's just as bad as you. Well, the thing is, Celty doesn't speak. A lot of other students gave her shit for that, and it pissed me off, but at the same time I didn't want to start beating up other kids again so instead I taught myself sign language." He smiled. "It was fun, actually. It's amazing how quickly you learn something you actually want to learn. I hate reading, but I read several books in less than a month. And I bought DVD's with video lessons included so I could learn even faster. My mom couldn't believe it. I just wanted to understand what Celty was saying to show her that I wanted to be her friend.

"Celty was absolutely overjoyed," he continued with a grin. "She made me teach Shinra, because she had tried to but she's shit at teaching in general so Shinra just learned how to sign 'date me' on his own and used it on her all the time.

"So I taught him, and it turned out that I wasn't too bad at that, so Celty got it into her mind that I should become a teacher. I didn't really believe it at the time. I still had terrible grades in everything, and university looked so out of my league. But she kept pestering me about it for the rest of the year until I said yes just so she'd stop."

There was more to it, of course; there were the endless hours of Shinra and Celty tutoring him for the classes he sucked the most at, entire nights before exams spent cramming the things he should've learned in middle school but never did. It wasn't half bad, though. They had fun with Shizuo's Celty-induced embryo of a dream career. Shizuo joked about it until it wasn't a joke anymore, until his grades went above average under his startled eyes, until he felt excitement instead of shame when he had to show his parents his exam results. Suddenly university wasn't a far-away concept anymore; it loomed over him with all the tangibility of _can_ instead of _could_. And all along Shinra and Celty had been there to help him choose and help him prepare, to push him toward teaching younger kids despite his own fear of his temper lashing out at them—because they trusted him and because they knew Shizuo hadn't lashed out at anyone who didn't deserve it in years.

All of it made Shizuo happy, made a warmth inside of him run light in his bloodstream from his toes to his heart to the tips of his fingers. When he blinked to look at Izaya the other was still staring at him, face soft in the daylight. He looked like his mother's faded picture, the one Shizuo hadn't looked at in months. He looked like his sisters. He looked like himself.

"Can I kiss you?" Shizuo asked.

"Please," Izaya said.

It took less than a second for Shizuo to stand up to his feet and lean over the bed. His eyes were closed before he felt Izaya's lips against his and the weightless tickle of his eyelashes on his skin. His hand grasped Izaya's wrist, fingers pressed to his elevated pulse so he could confirm what the high beeping of the machine behind him was already saying. Izaya was alive. Cold hands and warm mouth and eyes shadowed by unrest, and his fingers digging into Shizuo's nape and his breath a hiss of pain when he twisted his torso to kiss him better. Alive.


	5. Chapter 5

Warnings: discussions of child neglect.

Edited 3/25/17: I realized recently that I forgot to edit out the sex scenes from this story and from _Aches Like Nothing_ , which violates the guidelines and rating limits of this website. This is fixed now. If you want to read the explicit versions please go to my AO3 or my Tumblr (same username, links in my profile). My apologies!

* * *

 **Some Required Effort  
** **Part V**

Summer break let off at the very end of August this year. With the worst of the heat gone Shizuo's students came back lighter than they had left, with tan lines on their shoulders and skin peeling from their cheeks and noses where the sun had burned them. He took the first day slower than he would have liked to. The kids spent most of the morning hours relating their holiday activities one after the other, voices high from the too-long absence of an authority figure to tell them to keep quiet. No lesson was involved before lunch break arrived; every time Shizuo made to stop the effervescent discussion of whose trip had been the most impressive one of his students would look at him, bright-eyed, and ask, "What did you do over the break, Shizuo-sensei?"

He blamed his lack of composure at the innocent question on how little sleep he had gotten the night before. The thought of seeing Izaya after class was over had kept him up until midnight was well past him; he had sat on the balcony of his apartment, smoking long and slow into the tepid night air, with only Celty's cool hand on his shoulder to blink him out of stupor from time to time. And when one of the children asked him all he could remember was the white hospital room and its fitful inpatient, Izaya's hand tangled in his hair as they breathed against one another or leaving Kururi's swiftly when Shizuo walked past the door.

Mairu and Kururi looked happy, he thought. Aoba was talking to them in poor imitation of a whisper, and they giggled, Mairu with her voice and Kururi with her smile, at whatever he was telling them.

Shizuo hadn't seen Izaya in the past two weeks. He had made invitations when the man was discharged and was unsurprisingly met with silence—not refusal, though. Never refusal. And sometimes during his breaks his phone buzzed with an incoming message, with tastefully polite enquiries as to how Shizuo was, what he was doing, if the girls were behaving in class. Shizuo wasn't very used to waiting on relationships. Something told him Izaya's reluctance had more to do with Izaya's own issues than Shizuo himself, though. So Shizuo texted back, and let his heart flutter alone through cycles of uncertainty and confidence, and never pushed.

After the long break for lunch that he spent confined in the staffroom talking to Mikage, he managed to make his class actually work. Time didn't pass quite as quick as he wanted it to. The weather had cooled noticeably over the month, but Shizuo felt as hot as he had during the sleepless nights of heat wave. When the colorful arrows of the classroom clock finally dragged themselves to four there was sweat pooling at the lowest of his back.

Izaya wasn't smiling when he entered the room—but then again, Izaya rarely smiled like he meant it. He was walking on his own now, no chair or crutch of any kind in sight, and if his steps were slow at least they were secure. Their eyes met and Shizuo didn't repress the warmth bubbling up inside him when Izaya's face softened out of tension and his swept a look over Shizuo's body before turning around to seek out his sisters.

It felt strange, Shizuo thought, to be with Izaya and the girls inside the school without the ache of want to keep silent, to talk over until he could ignore it. There was nothing preventing him from looking at Izaya like he wanted to now; at his eyes or his mouth or the short hair at his nape, so black against his skin.

Izaya stayed near the desk until the flow of parents and children finally cleared away. Mairu and Kururi were around him, each grabbing one of his elbows, and though he didn't look relaxed exactly he wasn't pulling away either. Shizuo cleared his throat when Izaya looked back at him with an eyebrow raised, a steady heat over his cheeks. "Are you…" he paused. He wasn't sure how to phrase this.

Izaya looked away for a second, lips twitching, and then he said, "Do you want to come with us?"

"Yeah," Shizuo breathed. "Yeah, I'd like that."

This time when they walked past the gate they didn't stop on the playgrounds. Shizuo walked behind Izaya as they crossed the streets, eyes fixed to his legs for any sign of weakness or imbalance. He jumped slightly when a small, warm hand grabbed his fingers tightly. Kururi wasn't looking at him, too busy matching the rhythm of her steps to her sister's in front of her, and although Shizuo knew he wasn't supposed to, he closed his hand around hers. The school was long gone from their sight, hidden behind grey buildings and noisy roads, and the silent look Izaya gave him when he noticed Kururi was gone from his sight was enough of a permission.

The narrow street where they lived didn't seem as grim as the last time Shizuo had seen it.

Izaya stopped in front of the metal staircase, head lifted to look at the glint of their apartment door from below. Then he sighed and shook off Mairu's hold on his arm.

"Will you guys be okay on your own for a couple hours?" he asked them.

The answer was pretty obvious. Kururi dropped Shizuo's hand and crossed the few steps between her and her brother to lock her arms around his waist; Mairu didn't move away from her spot, but she grabbed Izaya's hand so tightly that the barest flicker of pain made its way to his face.

"Nothing's gonna happen," he said tiredly. He sounded like he had said these same words a thousand times before.

"Same as last time," Kururi muttered against his hip, voice choked against the fabric of his shirt but still too clear, too chilling.

Izaya's free hand hovered over her head for a second before touching her. "Really," he insisted, softer this time. "I'll be with Shizu-chan right there the entire time."

Three pairs of Orihara eyes immediately turned to Shizuo. He stood as still as if physical restraints had appeared to shackle him down.

Mairu was the first one to turn away and look back at her brother. "Is he gonna be your bodyguard?" she asked suspiciously, and Izaya smiled, cutting and taunting, and answered, "Exactly."

"Hey," Shizuo protested weakly. He was ignored.

The girls looked at each other in tandem, silent but undoubtedly communicating something to each other. In the end they both relaxed their hold on Izaya without completely letting go of him, and Izaya shifted on his feet but didn't move away.

"I want a hug," Mairu demanded. Shizuo couldn't help his body tensing, even as Kururi looked up with hope in her eyes and lifted her arms in invitation. Izaya paled a little, and then blushed enough for it to be visible in the shadow of the street.

He only shot a quick look at Shizuo before bending his knees to crouch so he was level with the girls. Mairu let out a happy, high-pitched noise and threw herself at him, arms crushing tight around his neck. Izaya toppled for a moment before catching his balance, and then Kururi stuck herself to his back and crossed her hands over his chest, nose buried in his hair. Izaya flinched more violently at the contact, breath catching audibly. But he didn't squirm out of their hold. He made no move at all except for the slow stroke of his thumb over Mairu's shoulder blade until the girls let go on their own.

Shizuo watched him stand back up feeling like his heart was hurrying out of his chest, a burn of misplaced pride catching warm all over his body. He didn't say a word. He and Izaya waited until the twins walked up the stairs and they could hear the clang of a door opening and closing, its echo like an alarm against old walls and windows, and then silence, more tangible with the soft rush of cars at the mouth of the alley than it would be without.

Izaya turned his head to look at him. "Let's get coffee," he said, and started walking away before his words could completely take meaning inside Shizuo's head.

Shizuo knew this part of town pretty well. He had toured it with Celty whenever she was working in the area, had scouted the shops when he learned where he was affected as a teacher for the year. Izaya walked past his preferred tea houses and cafés without sparing a glance at them, and Shizuo didn't stop him, only followed suit without speaking. Better be somewhere Izaya felt comfortable, he thought.

In the end Izaya's steps faltered in front of a hole-in-the-wall shop, the kind that sold snacks and coffee until late in the evening. At this time of the day it was almost deserted, hotter inside than it ought to. The sun beat against the glass window and made the room feel like an oven even with the door wide open in invitation for wind. Izaya walked to the table farthest away from the counter and sat down, still silent as a young waitress walked to them both to take their oder.

By now Shizuo's throat had closed on anxiety as much as fatigue. He tapped his fingers against the edge of the plastic table and watched Izaya take his phone out of his pocket to skim through his messages, thumb typing in answer to some or sliding with casual cruelty for what didn't interest him.

It only took a couple of minutes for the waitress to come back with their drinks. It felt like hours.

The iced coffee soothed some of the stifling warmth when Shizuo started drinking. Izaya put away his phone, didn't touch his own cup, and finally lifted his eyes to meet Shizuo's. He seemed to struggle with his words for a moment before speaking.

"I've been thinking," he started slowly.

Shizuo waited. Izaya didn't look like he expected an answer—his fingers locked together in front of him like a barrier, and he took a loud breath.

"I was honestly about to reject you completely," he continued, and Shizuo felt all the air in the room leave, but Izaya quirked a smile in his direction and said, "but that would be me running away again. The call-outs are getting tiring."

Shizuo breathed out. "So does that mean…" he trailed off hesitantly. Izaya's ears were red, his eyes flickering between Shizuo's face and the blue table between them.

"Don't get too excited," he muttered.

It didn't sound like a reproach, but it didn't sound very promising either. Shizuo's heart was beating a steady drum in his chest now, suffusing warmth through his insides and a peculiar weakness in his limbs that felt like shakiness without really being it. It was the same kind of feeling he had gotten while kissing Izaya at school and then in the hospital room.

Izaya wasn't looking at him anymore. His finger came to rest at the edge of his steaming cup of coffee, stroking the handle without taking it. He looked nervous, and it made something quiver inside Shizuo despite the glee that threatened to take over at Izaya's veiled admittance of his own feelings.

"In the hospital," Izaya said steadily, "I said there are things you don't know about me."

Izaya had called himself unlovable back then. "I remember," Shizuo replied softly.

Izaya's finger tensed against the cup. He groaned lowly, rubbed his other hand against the side of his neck. His cheeks were flaring a brighter red now than Shizuo had ever seen on him, but it didn't elicit fondness in him this time. Instead it made concern rise up a notch in him until he had to refrain himself from pressing his own hand on Izaya's to offer a semblance of comfort.

"Do you like men, Shizuo?" Izaya asked suddenly, and Shizuo choked on his drink.

Izaya's face was impassive; he made no move to make fun of Shizuo's splutters as he regained his breath, didn't so much as smirk in his direction. "Yeah, of course," Shizuo replied once the itch at the back of his throat became manageable again. "Don't you?" he added worriedly.

"Oh, I do." Izaya waved a hand lazily. "Never mind, that was the wrong way to talk about this." He still looked perturbed, though. Still red in the face from fear rather than embarrassment.

"Do you…" Izaya's fingers clenched again, bloodless-white at the knuckles. "Do you know anything about transgender people?"

There was a beat. And then, "Oh," Shizuo said, and _Oh_ , Shizuo thought.

He felt and heard his blood rush to his face, blinked away the haze in his vision until Izaya was clear again. There was a new shape of worry in him now, coming with a lick of curiosity Izaya's posture told him he absolutely shouldn't indulge. He swallowed with difficulty and pressed his palm against the cool dampness of his glass.

"Not really." He was trying for nonchalance but he knew his voice was tight with carefulness, too even to the ear to sound natural at all. It did nothing to appease the strain over Izaya's shoulder—over his neck, over the stark dip of his collarbones, the span too narrow now that he was looking.

"Well," Izaya said roughly. "You might want to look it up." A pause. "If you still like me, that is."

At least on this Shizuo wasn't uncertain. "I do," he replied, more forceful than strictly necessary. "It doesn't change anything."

Izaya let out a breathless laugh. "You'll find that it does, don't worry."

Silence spread between them, thick and obtrusive, loaded with tension.

Shizuo felt the urge to apologize. For wanting to peer closer at the shape of Izaya's clothes and for the way words caught in his throat with embarrassment or shame—he didn't know, couldn't tell, didn't wish to find out what made him embarrassed in the first place: his own cluelessness or… He shuddered, hair rising along his arm with skin-deep disgust at himself. He made himself look at Izaya's eyes instead of anywhere below the line of his chin and almost jerked away from the coldness he saw there. Izaya was closing off and Shizuo's chest ached at the sight; and he _knew_ with vicious clarity that whatever was happening here could only be blamed on himself. Because he had obviously reacted in a way Izaya had been building up against, and because there was a stream of questions in his head now, questions he wanted to ask even when the slouch of Izaya's body in his chair screamed _No_ like his voice couldn't have.

So Shizuo kept his mouth closed and breathed as slowly as he could. Before anything else he had to do something about the terrible tension Izaya was curling on and the miserable turn of his lips. He ripped his hand off the grasp he had on his own knee and slid it over the table until it reached Izaya's. He stroked the thin skin on its back with the tip of his fingers.

"Izaya," he tried. His voice was hesitant but it's wasn't _weak_ , and it would have to do for now. "I'm sorry that I reacted badly-"

"You didn't," Izaya replied, and tried to drag his hand away, but Shizuo pinned it down as firmly as he could without the threat of actual hurt.

"I obviously did," he smiled half-heartedly. "And I don't know what I said or did exactly, I don't really know anything about… about you being transgender, and what it means. And I'm sorry. I'll do better."

Izaya stared at him. He still looked upset, and his fingers spasmed beneath Shizuo's in unspent irritation. But he didn't try to pull away.

"I _will_ look it up," Shizuo insisted. "Because this is obviously important to you. And I'm glad that you told me. I'm happy that you trust me this much."

He lifted his hand to rest his fingers on Izaya's cheek. Izaya leaned in a little, hair brushing against Shizuo's knuckles with the movement. From the counter the waitress leered at them, but Shizuo didn't draw back despite the discomfort of her attention and Izaya stayed as he was, his eyes burning themselves into Shizuo's as he waited for more.

"I really like you," Shizuo offered. He pressed his palm against Izaya's skin, tugged softly at the hair behind his ear. "There's nothing about you that I don't like, even your shitty attitude."

Izaya's lips twitched in the ghost of a smile. His hand came up to cover Shizuo's on his cheek, warm from holding his coffee for too long. "Don't make me regret this," he said simply.

 _I won't_ , Shizuo thought, and let Izaya lean over the table to meet him halfway, dry lips dragging against his, mouth warm even against the weather and leaving hot, bright tingles all over Shizuo's skin.

* * *

October started with cold wind and a request.

"Aoba-kun says his mom says we can have a sleepover," said Mairu as soon as they all left the school grounds. Izaya could only thank himself for equipping her with woolen gloves for the sudden drop in temperature—her hand was clutching his and the fabric slipped when her hold tightened, making it harder for her to crush his fingers as she liked to.

"Did she," he answered.

"I just told you," Mairu frowned, the sarcasm flying over her head completely. "Saturday evening!"

Kururi was walking ahead of them this time. She had stopped hanging onto Izaya for every little thing as she had right after first getting permission, and Izaya swallowed back the disappointment he felt every time he thought about it. It was better this way. She wasn't supposed to be scared of his disappearing every time she let go of him. At least Mairu hadn't grown past the need to constantly grab some part of his body. Mairu had always been a little too much like him.

"And did you two just forget to talk to me about it before making that decision?" Izaya asked, voice loud enough with mockery to be picked on even by six year-olds.

Mairu tugged unhappily at his hand. He winced. "You would've just said no," she whined. "This way you know Aoba-kun's mom is okay with it, and Aoba-kun gave us her number so you can call her to tell her you agree. We did all the work for you."

"We did," Kururi chanted back, head turned to look at them.

"Watch where you're walking," Izaya snapped. Kururi smiled brightly and turned back around with a touch of dramatic flair to her movements.

Mairu was dragging behind now, resting her weight on his hand so he was forced to slow his pace and hunch a little forward, effectively pulling her along. _God_.

"Shizu-chan would agree!" she accused loudly, and Izaya rolled his eyes.

"A good thing Shizu-chan has no say in what goes on in this family, then."

"But you like him!"

Izaya felt his face flare with heat at her words, as innocent as they were. Explaining the concept of dating to them had been his worst mistake yet, as they had taken it to mean Shizuo could appear in any argument they had as a pivotal point. "Still doesn't give him a say in whether or not you get to sleep at Aoba-kun's," he replied tersely.

In a way he was glad Shizuo had a meeting after class and couldn't walk the way home with them this time. He wasn't enthused about the soft, all-consuming brand of good will Shizuo carried around like armor—especially not when his sisters were just being brats.

It was truly cold by the time they arrived home. Harsh wind and low grey clouds and dead leaves creaking beneath their feet, and when Izaya took his key out of his coat his fingers felt numb around the metal, clumsy as he opened the door.

He immediately turned on the heat, barking quickly at Kururi to keep her scarf on until the room didn't feel like the inside of a fridge. She smiled again, hopping on the couch and sitting on her socked feet to keep them warm and playing with the hem of the blanket Izaya had left unfolded this morning when he woke up.

Mairu sat down on the floor next to the couch and angrily pulled on the loose strings of her hat. The stitches along the fold came undone one by one. "I wanna go to Aoba-kun's," she complained. There was a hint of real upset in her voice, most likely due to the long day at school and the cold weather sapping her energy away. Izaya took off his coat and walked to the kitchen to put on the kettle. Shiki didn't expect him to show up before six today; he had time for tea.

"You should have told me you wanted to instead of going behind my back to plan it all anyway," he said without looking at her. He heard the soft thud of cloth hitting ground and guessed she had thrown the hat away instead of destroying it completely.

Then her voice came again, too muffled for him to understand completely, but the intake of air from Kururi and the way she said, " _Mairu_ ," at the same time as Mairu's tongue trailed on the word _mom_ like an insult was enough for Izaya to freeze over.

"What did you say?" he asked slowly, pressing a hand on the unlit stove to keep himself upright, eyes catching at Mairu's now guilty expression. He felt drawn in from hurt instead of concern, heart beating too-fast and almost painful against his ribs. His belly flared with remembered pain from the stabbing, as if there were still thread keeping his skin close, as if he was cut open again and losing hold on reality as he bled out on a dirty cement floor.

Mairu couldn't see any of this, of course. She looked at him stubbornly and repeated, "I _said_ , mom would let us sleep at Aoba-kun's on Saturday."

In the corner of his eyes Izaya could see Kururi shift on the couch, legs dangling in front of her now and heels hitting the padding at the front repeatedly. But it was Mairu he was looking at, with the upset tilt of her lips so reminiscent of Shirou's.

Maybe she wasn't just tired, Izaya thought faintly. The tips of his fingers ought to burn from being too close to the now hot kettle but he could barely feel them. Maybe she really was upset, maybe she was miserable, maybe she was still mourning too much and simply not talking about it and Izaya had been _stupid_ enough not to see it. Foolish enough to believe she was better now.

The low whistle of boiling water broke him out of his reverie. He cleared his throat.

"Okay," he said. "All right. You can both go to Aoba-kun's on Saturday."

He turned his back on her satisfied yell to pour the tea in three different cups. The skin of his knuckles had reddened from the heat and he scratched at them with his thumb without thinking until they ached. He heard Kururi's footsteps toward him and felt the press of her forehead against his arm.

"Iza-nii," she said, plea and apology at once, and Izaya had to blink away the tell-tale burn in his eyes from how messed up it was that _she_ was apologizing for hurting _him_.

"You have Aoba-kun's mom's phone number, right?" he asked evenly. His fingers came up to stroke through Kururi's short hair, and he felt her nod against him. "Good. Give it to me, I'll arrange everything before I make dinner."

He barely heard any of the conversation with the Kuronuma woman—he forgot her first name as soon as she said it, didn't so much as miss a breath when she said, "I was expecting a parent, not a sibling," with an unconcerned laugh. He wrote down her address on a clean napkin and offered platitudes when she started fussing over her goodbyes. Mairu was in the shower now, half of her tea left to cool on the coffee table. Kururi was curled up on the couch, eyes fixed on the TV where a kids' show was running on low volume. Izaya sat down next to her.

"I have to go to work in five minutes," he said carefully. Kururi looked up at him. "Will you be okay?"

"Yes," she answered, and then, with her lips tugged into a frown, "you?"

"I'm just fine." He made no move when she leaned against his side and wormed an arm around his waist. She felt warm, drowsy in a content way from her day at school.

"Shizu-chan said my handwriting is good today," she muttered unexpectedly.

Izaya could believe that. He could picture Shizuo's smile as he said the words and the way he would crouch next to Kururi's desk to point out her mistakes, could almost hear his voice grow rough as it always did around his students. Izaya let his head rest on the back of the couch and stared at the ceiling. Their neighbor was stepping loudly behind the wall, dragging chairs against the floor so that everyone could hear her, because she couldn't stand the sound of running water and Mairu was taking too much time again for her tastes. He hoped Mairu took another good fifteen minutes.

Izaya took Mairu and Kururi to Kuronuma Aoba's home on Saturday after his work ended. Kuronuma lived not far from where Shizuo did, in a new-looking apartment building with tasteful wooden doors and carpeted floors and a guardian at the entrance behind the glass pans that led to the lobby. The woman who opened after he rung looked exactly as he had expected her to from the sound of her voice—short than him, with a bowl cut of black hair and a softness around her middle, a smile stretching on her face cutting through dimples and crow feet around her eyes. She looked like a mother.

"Please come in," she said with the voice of someone who didn't receive visitors often.

Izaya didn't especially want to. But Mairu was already tugging at his shirt, looking intently at the boy standing behind Kuronuma who was staring at her in turn with bright brown eyes and an excited smile. Izaya took off his shoes and put on the guest slippers the woman handed him.

The apartment didn't look as wealthy as the outside of the building made it out to be. The furniture was sparse but comfortable, the walls stacked with pictures of Aoba and another, older child Izaya thought might be a high schooler. It was bright, though, with big, clean windows from which light poured in to rest on polished wood and lilac fabric, and it was warm without being stifling, with potted plants and vibrant flowers to give out an earthy scent.

Kuronuma brought him tea barely a minute after he sat down at the table. By then his sisters and the boy—Aoba—were already engaged in a deep conversation, too fast-paced for Izaya to follow; he blinked sheepishly when he saw Kururi tread her fingers through Aoba's hair rhythmically the way she sometimes did with him. Aoba didn't so much as blink from the contact.

"He likes your sisters a lot," Kuronuma said awkwardly as she sat down in front of him. "He's usually very… well, he's a lot to handle, in school at least. But their teacher said he's been doing better and better in class."

"I had no idea," Izaya answered.

Kuronuma chuckled. "I think it has a lot to do with Mairu-chan and Kururi-chan. He won't stop talking about them."

Izaya glanced at the kids again. Mairu looked excited, but not to the extent of screaming or accidentally breaking anything. Kururi was still calm, didn't even seem to notice the foreign objects and smells around her.

"Well." Izaya pressed his fingers tighter against the hot ceramic cup and brought it to his lips to take a sip of scalding green tea. "I hope everything goes well. Please don't hesitate to call me if anything happens."

The woman nodded, and then blushed slightly and fidgeted with her own cup. Izaya tensed.

"Are you…" she started. She paused for a handful of seconds, looking for her words, and then, "I'm sorry for asking, but—where are your parents?"

Air seemed to come slower to and from Izaya's lungs when he finally opened his mouth to answer her. "They're dead. Car accident a year ago. I've been taking care of them since."

"I'm so sorry," she fussed immediately, red in the face and pity in her voice, and Izaya was about to wave off her concern rather than make himself go through it when she said, "This is an amazing thing you're doing. You're so young… You must be really close to your sisters."

His chest locked, heavy and unmoving even with the push of his breaths against his ribcage. He thought he must have said something in answer because Kuronuma stopped looking like the less garish version of a tomato and eventually his feet brought him back to the plush carpet floor of the hallway, with the sound of children's laughter in his ears and the faint ringing of Kuronuma's voice lavishing praise on him like blows.

He was still thinking about it when the cold fall wind hit him as he walked out of the pretty, expensive building. It had been more than a year since he actively sought out the memories but they came to him as sharp-cut and clear as if he had been consciously examining them all this time. The heat of summer crushing on him, the irritation he had felt in the office of his mother's old solicitor. The sympathy in the man's eyes as he read out her will, glaringly exempt of Izaya's own name—not even his old one, the one Kyouko had kept calling him until two years after he moved out and until her anger receded to begging, _Please come back home, spend time with your sisters_. Izaya had told the man he would consider his options until the funeral. He spent that same night cramming for the beginning of the semester and ignoring the febrility taking hold of his heart, until his eyesight grew fuzzy with sleep and he fell as he was, sitting down on his bed with his head in a book he hadn't read a line from in more than three hours.

It had been simple. His parents' own money paid for the burial on the slot of earth they had reserved. Izaya didn't have to make any calls; he received the notice as every other guest had and rented a suit for the occasion—straight cut with the shoulders' line broader than necessary so no one could ignore how much he _wasn't_ the child Kyouko had perhaps talked about to the other mourners. He was sweating before he arrived to the funeral home, back slick with sweat even before the march to the graves actually began, but by then he had other things in mind than his last child's tantrum.

Because Kururi and Mairu were at the funeral too. Clad in black dresses and black shoes, grown twice as tall as he remembered the last time he had seen them by accident in the streets of Shinjuku—and with tired faces and dirt in their hair from no one telling them to wash it, and their uncut nails digging into each other's hands with all the strength of fear.

Izaya called the solicitor with his answer before the last guest had even left.

There was an itch in his throat now that had nothing to do with the cold October wind. For a second Izaya stared at the sight in front of him without realizing where he was, and then he recognized the sleek metallic door to the janitor's office and the sounds of the Kawagoe highway above his head.

He plucked his phone out of his jeans pocket and pressed it to his hear. It rung for a surprisingly long time before Shizuo picked up. _"Hello?"_ He sounded relaxed. Alert. Izaya breathed out more easily.

"It's me," he said as steadily as he could. "Can I come over?"

 _"Yeah, of course."_ There was a murmur of conversation, muffled by Shizuo's palm against the receiver, probably. _"Are you okay?"_ he asked worriedly.

"Just fine," Izaya replied before hanging up.

He took the elevator to the penultimate floor and climbed the rest of the way by foot as slowly as he could. Even so it wasn't three minutes until he reached the highest of the building and rang Shizuo's doorbell.

He heard Shizuo's voice, and then footsteps too light to be Shizuo himself, and the person who opened the door was not Shizuo indeed—but it wasn't anyone Izaya would have expected either.

"Good evening," Hanejima Yuuhei said politely, head bowed as he stepped to the side to let him in.

Izaya's mouth opened but no sound came out.

"Kasuka?" Shizuo appeared at the end of the hallway. He was looking at his phone. His eyes widened in surprise when he looked up to see Izaya here, mouth immediately softening into a smile. "Hey," he said, taking a few steps forward. "I wasn't expecting you so soon. Were you just outside the door or something?"

"Or something," Izaya replied finally. He walked past the door, took off his shoes. Was about to walk up to Shizuo himself to greet him properly. And then the numbness let off at last and he turned to Hanejima instead to ask, " _Why_ is Ikebukuro's favorite idol here?"

"I was just visiting my brother," Hanejima answered without a hint of actual emotion in his voice, and Shizuo laughed roughly.

"I didn't exactly want you two to meet like this," Shizuo said. He sounded happy. "Kasuka, this is my boyfriend, Orihara Izaya."

"Nice to meet you."

"Nice to meet you too," Izaya said through gritted teeth, face flushing to actual warmth at Shizuo's casual words, and some of the misery lightening its hold on him as if swept away by the wind.

 _Kasuka_ looked different in reality than he did on the small, ill-lit screen of Izaya's television when the twins stared at him during interviews or early morning shows. It might be the lack of makeup to fake the color on his cheeks or the smoothness of his face in general, but he was as pretty without it as he was with it. It had more to do with how flat his mouth was and how cold his eyes looked, Izaya thought. He wasn't staring exactly but he held Izaya's stare with a fierce absence of will until Izaya felt the urge to provoke a response like oil on his skin.

Kasuka turned to look at Shizuo before he could indulge. "I'll be leaving, then."

"Yeah," Shizuo smiled. "Take care."

The man nodded—once deeply at Shizuo and one more time at Izaya, before putting on his shoes and carefully closing the door as he walked out. It barely made a sound to diffuse the silence in the room. Izaya clenched his shoulders and turned back around.

"Hi," Shizuo breathed, crossing the last steps separating him from Izaya and leaning down to kiss him.

It wasn't much, just a press of lips still warm and a quick taste of coffee and ash, but it was enough to loosen the last of the tension in Izaya's body.

"Please tell me Shinra isn't here," Izaya said against Shizuo's mouth, and Shizuo laughed again.

Shinra, as it turned out, was not here. He was gone with Celty for the weekend, leaving the apartment comfortably spacey and quiet for Shizuo to enjoy—and, apparently, invite his celebrity of a brother for coffee. The glass door to the balcony was ajar so that the crisp outside air could come in and sweeten the overheated living-room. Izaya sat down on the couch and stared at the commercials running on the muted flatscreen television.

"Do you want something to drink?" Shizuo called from the kitchen.

"No," Izaya said curtly.

He heard Shizuo walk behind him and breathed in preparation for contact just before Shizuo's fingers landed on his nape, trailing softly up to the tip of his hair. "Where are your sisters?" he asked.

"At a friend's. Sleepover."

Shizuo hummed. He stayed like this for a while, standing behind the couch with his hand working through Izaya's hair and stroking the skin at its base until Izaya felt comfortable shivers crawl up his back, ears numb from pleasure and the beginning of warmth at the core of his belly. He didn't know whether to feel grateful or not when Shizuo's hand left him and Shizuo himself walked around the couch to sit down next to him.

"You do realize they're never going to let you live this down," Izaya stated after one of Hanejima Yuuhei's commercial spots played silently.

"What do you mean?" Shizuo said against the lid of his coffee cup.

Izaya lightly nudged him with his foot. "Hanejima Yuuhei," he clarified. "Mairu and Kururi are big fans. Mairu especially."

"Oh." Shizuo took a sip, and made a face against the no-doubt lukewarm bitterness. "Well. Kasuka is a big boy, I'm sure he can hold his own against two six-year-old girls."

"At least promise me your family isn't secretly running the country."

"No," Shizuo said, his smiled turned feral as he pushed his leg back against the pressure of Izaya's foot. "We don't have that unsavory Orihara blood."

"I take offense in this," Izaya pointed.

"Sure you do."

Izaya laughed, bright and shaky and short, and Shizuo looked at him with eyes that only seemed to grow softer with every second they met Izaya's.

The silence that followed was comfortable. Izaya let the sole of his foot rest against the curve of Shizuo's leg, warmth seeping through his skin until he could forget the last of the shivers that had wrecked him on the way here. Shizuo toyed with the coffee he was probably not going to finish, eyes only darting away when his phone buzzed on the table, alight with a text Izaya guessed was from Celty. He didn't feel cold at all anymore. Not with the open window and not with bad memories. Even so, Izaya brought himself closer to the heat of Shizuo's body next to him, lifted a hand to turn his face around so he could press their lips together again.

Shizuo fumbled with his cup for a second, breaking away from the kiss with a whispered, "Sorry," so he could put it down on the glass table. It rasped softly in the quiet but Izaya paid no mind to it; Shizuo was straightening his back again to push further against him, chest to chest so that his arm could curl around Izaya's back and his hand could crawl up to grab his hair, tongue flickering hot against Izaya's, bitter and wet and utterly satisfying. He only broke away this time to kiss roughly against Izaya's temple. Izaya bowed his head down to escape the violent shudder that shook his chest and stick his own mouth to Shizuo's neck instead. He tasted like salt. Like clean, dry skin, taut over muscle and bone at his shoulder and warm, warmer now with the contact that made soft little breaths escape his mouth, level with Izaya's ear.

Shizuo's hand glided down Izaya's back to rest at the edge of his shirt. Izaya lifted his head to kiss him again, open-mouthed and greedy, eyes half closed so he could see as much as feel the satisfaction of Shizuo's eyelashes fluttering shut against his cheekbone and the awkward press of their noses.

Izaya didn't jump when Shizuo's fingers crept up underneath his clothes this time. Instead he arched into the touch and let his throat make sound against the acute pangs of heat in his stomach and the way his skin felt like fire after every trail of Shizuo's fingertips against his spine, until they reached the hem of his binder, stuck to skin too tightly for any more feathery touches. Still, Shizuo tugged at it, short and willful, and Izaya closed his mouth to bite lightly at Shizuo's upper lip.

Shizuo pulled away, one hand buried in Izaya's hair and the other still caught between fabric and skin, gathering warmth in the friction. "Is this going where I think it's going?" he asked. When he breathed out Izaya could feel it on his lips.

"If you want it to," Izaya replied. He stroked Shizuo's collarbone with his thumb, slowly, heavily, so that he could ignore the anticipation building up like anxiety at what Shizuo would say and focus instead on how warm he felt. He didn't want to let go of that feeling. Not yet.

He needn't have worried. Shizuo nodded with a smile and leaned down again, licking his lips and then Izaya's, red and glistening and so hot he thought he might be able to feel it to the touch.

Izaya leaned back quickly. "Do you have lube and condoms?"

Shizuo stopped dead in his track at the question, the disappointed frown he was wearing enough of an answer. "No," he said. "I wasn't exactly expecting this. Maybe Shinra has some."

"I'm not using _Shinra's_ condoms," Izaya replied with enough distaste in his voice to be heard a mile around.

Shizuo chuckled, and came forward to kiss Izaya's cheek. It flared at the contact. "I know. I was kidding."

For a moment they stayed in each other's space, Izaya's thigh resting above Shizuo's. Shizuo's hand left Izaya's hair to land on it instead, digging slightly in the soft of it through the fabric of Izaya's jeans. And the low tug of want in Izaya's belly didn't go away.

"I'll go buy some," he said after a short second of struggle to find an even enough voice.

"You sure?" Shizuo asked.

"Yeah. Might be useful in the future even if we don't do anything today." Izaya kissed Shizuo again after standing up, ruffling his hair until it stood in spikes and waves on his head and no one could have looked at him without knowing Izaya's hand had gone through it.

The air outside did nothing to cool him down this time. It prickled unfelt against his face, buzzed around him as if he was surrounded by a thin, impervious layer of something separating him from the touch of wind or cold. Izaya smiled, unashamed, at the salesman who took the opportunity to leer at him after scanning his purchase. "Keep the money," he offered after handing out a few crumpled bills, and the man spluttered and reddened, forehead shining with sweat.

Tension was still threatening the loose slump of his back and shoulders as he walked, Izaya knew. One thought in the wrong direction and his confidence could crumble like dry leaves. But every time his mind wandered away from the slow glow of pleasure and want in his stomach he thought back to how good Shizuo had been to him and to the now freefalling trust Izaya had in him, to how in five minutes Shizuo's presence had erased the gooish weight of worries and regrets that had plagued him before coming here. To harsh drag of Shizuo's fingers against his skin. To how much he wanted this.

Shizuo was sat down again when Izaya came back inside the apartment. The TV was off and the coffee mug was gone to soak in the sink, and Izaya suffered a brief second of hesitation at the mouth of the hallway before Shizuo turned his head to look at him and pushed himself to his feet with one hand on the arm of the couch.

It didn't feel wrong.

* * *

The shower they took afterward almost ended up being more than just a shower. In-between the kisses Shizuo bestowed on the line of Izaya's shoulders Izaya could feel firmness from more than muscle and bone, and if left to contemplate the idea with clarity he knew he could grow back the same amount of heat in answer. But there was sweetness and pleasure to be found in the drag of Shizuo's fingers massaging foreign shampoo into Izaya's scalp also, another kind of proximity in standing naked in the yellow light of the bathroom, tinted down from the blurry glass pan holding the shower stall close. They were tired as well; with the overall exhaustion that followed sexual gratification and made one feel as though every muscle in the body had been worked through at once.

Izaya threw the bedspread in a corner of the room and made his way under the blanket wearing nothing but boxers and an old, worn-soft top Shizuo lent him. Shizuo spent some more time up before joining him—fixing the dishes in the kitchen, closing the window against the now chilly night air. It didn't matter. All Izaya could care about was the comfortable lean of his own body in an actual bed, for the first time in more than a year. He stretched his legs as far to the sides as they could go, satisfied to notice that if he lied in the middle of the mattress he couldn't reach any edge.

"Make some room," Shizuo grumbled when he came back. Izaya rolled back to the side and waited for the shift of blankets and sheets as Shizuo joined him under the cover.

For a second fear gripped him, irrational and unstoppable, that they would sleep like this on opposite ends of the bed; but then Shizuo threw an arm around him to pull himself closer, not as tight as before, but enough that Izaya could feel the warmth of his body behind him.

He hadn't thought it would feel this comfortable. The weight of Shizuo's arm over him would become too much after a while, as would the proximity, but right now, with his body still limp from physical exertion and the slow drum of the shower against his skin, he couldn't have moved for the world. It was too dark to make out the room around him or examine the pictures he had glimpsed while entering earlier. Shizuo's fingers brushed against his collarbone, from the base of his neck to the top of his chest, and Izaya closed his eyes.

"That was great," Shizuo mumbled sleepily behind him.

"Thanks," Izaya mocked.

"Don't be an ass." His grip tightened playfully. Izaya let himself relax further into the hold, still too alert to really feel the tug of sleep but open enough to it that he knew he could find it soon. Shizuo shifted a little closer. He took his arm back to link it under Izaya's own and around his waist this time, thumb under his breast and palm braced against his side.

"Why did you come here?" he said.

Izaya turned his head back as much as he could. "What do you mean?"

"You never just come here unannounced," Shizuo explained. "I figured you were upset about something."

He didn't sound suspicious. Just worried. It was ultimately this that made Izaya answer at all.

"I was thinking about my parents," he said, "and about how terribly I've taken care of my sisters."

He felt Shizuo brace himself up, saw his concerned face hovering over his own in the corner of his vision. "What are you talking about?"

Izaya turned to his other side so he could face him. "The mother of the kid I left Mairu and Kururi with said I was a great person for taking them in," he continued.

"And this means you're bad at taking care of them… why?" Shizuo was frowning now, all traces of sleep vanished from his features.

"Because I am," Izaya answered simply. His energy was too long gone for anger to rise or shame to lock him down. "You know it. You saw how I was a few months ago."

"But you changed." Shizuo's hand came to rest on his neck. "You got better at it."

"It's not enough," Izaya replied. His throat felt tight again, body too slow to react but mind always racing—"I still let my six-year-old sisters do their mourning alone." He swallowed. "They don't even talk about their parents in front of me. It's like they're scared I'll get mad."

"They're your parents too," Shizuo said softly, but Izaya shook his head.

"It's not- it's not the same."

They both stayed silent for a moment. Shizuo's hand was warm against Izaya's neck. He could probably feel every painful swallow with the heel of his palm. Izaya wished he would crush it down.

"Do you want to talk about your parents?" Shizuo asked finally.

 _No_ , was Izaya's first thought, but then, _Maybe_ , slower and deeper, a need buried for so long now trying to fight its way out of his mouth and into his brain where he could never hide it again. He raised his eyes to meet Shizuo's. There was no judgment there.

"It's a stupid story," he said at last.

"It's not stupid if you want to tell it."

Izaya rolled his eyes. Blinked away the blurriness. Shizuo smiled.

"Kyouko—my mother, she was a very busy woman." His voice came out lower than he would have preferred, with the evidence of struggle in it like rocks on a road. "Not home very often. My father was a journalist. He pretty much followed her on every trip she took. I spent a lot of time with sitters as a kid."

Shizuo lied back down on the pillow, face level with Izaya's, so that the air he breathed out of his nose came to shiver on the edge of Izaya's chin. He didn't move his hand away.

"I'll spare you the details, but my mother wasn't very happy about the whole," Izaya winced, " _gender_ thing. I think she just didn't understand it. My father was a little more open, but he never said anything Kyouko didn't approve of, so he never said anything at all about it. Anyway." He breathed out slowly. "She didn't like that I cut my hair and dressed like a boy. She was never violent about it—just disappointed. I figured she wasn't going to change her mind when I was sixteen, so I moved out."

"That's pretty young," Shizuo commented, still in the same even tone.

"Yes, well. I'm resourceful," Izaya taunted. Shizuo snorted softly at that.

There was a moment of silence. Izaya tried to sort through his memories without losing hold of the calm Shizuo's presence allowed him.

"I think she changed after the girls were born," he said, softer now. "I came to see her in the hospital. She called me by the right name for the first time that day. I thought maybe she was just tired and confused from giving birth, but-" He stopped. Swallowed. "I think, maybe, she wanted to get to know me. Try to fix things between us."

Maybe giving birth had reminded Kyouko that she had another child. Izaya hadn't cared back then—he had come to visit more out of brief curiosity and a strong need to show he was okay living on his own than out of real concern for his newly born sisters. But Kyouko had said, "Hello, Izaya," with two babies in her arms and circles like bruises under her eyes. She had always called him Izaya after that day. And when Izaya had adopted Mairu and Kururi after the funeral—they had never called him anything other than brother. As if that was what he had always been introduced as their whole lives.

Izaya cleared his throat. "I guess we'll never know," he said hoarsely.

Shizuo's hand shifted to his nape, to the hair at the back of Izaya's skull so he could pull him forward into a brief kiss. "I'm sorry," he said. Izaya shook his head, and their noses brushed.

"I can deal with it," he replied. "I've dealt with it before. But I shouldn't have let my sisters feel like they can't talk about their own mom in front of me."

"You know I'm not the one you should be having this conversation with," Shizuo murmured.

Izaya let out a brittle laugh. "I know."

* * *

Sunday was Izaya's only day off, and after leaving Shizuo's place and picking up the girls from Kuronuma Aoba's still pretty, still expensive building lot, he spent it walking around the streets of Ikebukuro with them.

It was sunny, warmer than it had been all week. To Kururi's greatest joy the sidewalks were littered with freshly-fallen leaves. She stepped in them, reveling in the dry, creaking sounds they made under the soles of her boots. Mairu tried to walk in her step without crushing a single one in turn.

He let them run wild inside West Gate Park; it was still early enough that almost no one was up except for an old lady walking her dog and a couple of college students who didn't seem to have slept at all. Mairu appropriated one of the swings for more than an hour. Kururi kept up the leaf-stepping for most of that time until she tired of it and came to sit beside Izaya on the bench, both of her gloved hands holding Izaya's elbow.

"I'm hungry," Mairu complained when she finally relented the Orihara Swing to another kid. "I want ice cream."

"In this weather?" Izaya said tiredly.

Mairu stared at him, completely unimpressed. " _Yes_."

Finding an ice cream parlor in Ikebukuro in the middle of fall wasn't an impossible task, as it turned out. They had to walk a long way from the park, and Mairu complained endlessly—except when they walked by Russia Sushi, which Izaya steered them both away from despite the way their eyes lit up at the extravagant display—but they found one not far from their school, crushed between an attorney's office and a grim apartment building. It looked almost decrepit. The owner watched them with wide eyes as they ate.

"Do you want to go home?" he asked them when they were finished. As expected, half of the ice cream was left behind in their cups, too cold on their numb tongues now.

They both nodded. Izaya didn't think they'd had much occasion to sleep if Kuronuma Aoba was half as excitable as his mother had made him out to be.

Mairu and Kururi fell asleep on the couch almost as soon as they sat down. Izaya felt drowsy himself despite the most comfortable night he had had in a year, but with the couch taken he didn't want to borrow the girls' bedroom. And it really _was_ their bedroom now; with school-assigned drawings hanging from the back wall alongside an especially tacky poster of Shizuo's brother in a vampire outfit, the provenance of which Izaya couldn't begin to guess at. There were socks and shoes strewn on the floor, and the bed was unmade from a previous nap—most likely during Izaya's work hours the previous day.

He would soon have enough money to rent a bigger apartment, one with room for two beds instead of one. Izaya had started looking about a month prior, had a notebook full of references and prices and locations already. One offer was especially tempting—a three-room place with bright windows and good isolation, a few yards away from Kawagoe Highway.

His phone buzzed inside his pocket. _You left with my shirt_ , Shizuo was saying, the accusatory tone belied by the memory of his hold still so stark inside Izaya's mind.

 _Come and get it_ , he texted back.

It buzzed again a second later.

The girls woke up mid-afternoon, with creased brows and dry mouths and the usual apathetic moodiness of too-long naps. Izaya gave them some water and turned the TV on to some kids' show doing a rerun of several episodes. They latched onto it with the intensity of a few grown men watching baseball and started whispering together almost as soon as the characters were introduced.

"I like the pink one," Mairu said at one point, loud for Izaya's benefit.

"He's definitely the prettiest of the lot," Izaya approved after a brief glance at the screen.

It made her giggle. Kururi leaned backward to look at him with a bright smile.

Eventually the rerun ended, with a cliffhanger and a promise for more the following week. Izaya pushed himself upright. "I'll make dinner."

"I want ramen!" Mairu called immediately.

Izaya snorted. "No way. You had ice cream for lunch, I'm making vegetables."

"Unfair," Kururi threw in, but she didn't look upset about it.

Izaya went through the motions of making and eating dinner with his mind in a haze. Shizuo's words and his own from the previous night kept replaying themselves to him, slowed down to their essence and mixed with the feeling of close contact and comfort. His fingers grabbed the hem of the old, soft shirt he was wearing—the logo on the front faded to whiteness from too many turns inside a washing machine. Worn and shapeless.

"Mairu, Kururi," he said before they could leave the table and take the dishes to the sink. Their heads lifted up as one. He breathed out slowly. "I need to talk to you about something."

Their eyes stayed fixed on him for so long he thought they would never leave again. But Kururi opened her mouth and asked, "What is it?"

Izaya's words got stuck in his mouth. For a brief second he felt the threat of panic and shame weigh against his conscience and almost win—and maybe it would have, in another world. But he clenched his hand around the soft fabric of Shizuo's shirt and said, "I wanted to apologize."

He thought they might ask what for. But their faces stayed the same, open, patient, as if they had consciously waited for this moment to come.

"I'm sorry that I made you think-" he choked, but made himself continue. "I'm sorry that I left you both alone to deal with their deaths. With mom and dad's deaths. I shouldn't have done that. I should've been here for you, and I wasn't, and I'm _so sorry_."

His throat hurt now, a bright ache going up to his head and making his eyesight blur with unmistakeable tears, so he dug his fingers into his eyelids to push them back until he finished.

"And I want you both to know that if it's not too late, you can still come to me for anything," he said, and the words stumbled out of his mouth with abandon now, unstoppable and endless, "you can talk about mom and dad whenever you want. You can ask me questions about them if you want. You can ask me anything." He took a shuddering breath. "And no matter what, I love you. I love you _so much_. You're the most important people in my life. I've never loved _anyone_ the way I love you."

He couldn't see anything anymore but he kept his eyes open, kept wishing the tears to retreat and not spill over to burn down his face so he could witness theirs instead.

He felt hands on him—one pair holding his and another tugging at his elbow until the hand still on his face fell down his side and small fingers linked with his, unbothered by the wetness of his own tears. He blinked the rest of the burn away from his eyes, saltwater running down his face and dropping from his chin. He couldn't breathe through his nose anymore. But he could see.

"Silly Iza-nii," Mairu said at him. She hooked her free arm around his middle and buried her face against his hip, fingers still clenched tight with his. "We love you too."

Kururi pressed against his other side with her head lifted to his. "We love you too," she repeated. Like an evidence. Like an unshakeable truth.

Izaya's sobs felt like laughter.


End file.
